She's So Halogen
by Tinhen
Summary: [complete] Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse plus a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter plus a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion equals A good, old-fashioned RoryDave romance.
1. Chapter One

****

She's So Halogen

Chapter One

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- This fic is complete. I am now officially the original Rory/Dave writer. Go me! Pleaze note that I desperately wanted a beta reader for this fic, but was unable to find ANYONE up to the task. If you are willing to help me out with the later chapters, please let me know!

*

__

Twelve years into the future (2015 AD)

Dave Rygalski sighed and sat down at the table in Brian Newman's dressing room, looking at his old friend with tired eyes. Brian glanced over at him, pulled a bottle of Heineken out of the bucket by the mirror where he was seated, and tossed it over. Dave caught it and popped the cap off with alacrity. The cap stuck to the bottle opener on the side of the table for a moment, then dropped off and rolled under the couch.

"This sucks," he said finally. 

"Dude, you're telling me," Brian replied. "Liam is starting to get testy with me about it, and I'm like, 'Dude, I don't write the lyrics,' 'cause we all know I'm about as poetic as a rabbit turd. So please, spare me the trouble and just write a freaking song, alright?"

Dave sighed and put the half-empty bottle back down on the table, staring down into the green glass and the golden liquid beyond. "It's not that easy," he said. "I need inspiration."

"Then go find it." Brian was looking at him with the sort of expression that plainly said, 'You're an idiot.' Dave felt that the universe was unbalanced to have _Brian_ of all people giving him that look.

"Again, not that easy." He took another sip. "I'm sorry, and I wish it was."

"Then we have to find you inspiration," Brian said, jumping up. "You've been moping around constantly since Lane got married. And you haven't written a single song."

Dave glared at him. "It's not everyday that your first serious girlfriend-- by that I mean the one you lost your virginity to-- marries some guy four years her junior just because he's cute and plays the drums." He took a hearty sip at that.

"Yeah, I think he's a creep, too, but it's not my place to tell her. She'll figure it out on her own, eventually." Brian rifled around through a box open on the dressing table. "You have to admit, he is genuinely nice to her, at least."

"She's the only one. His own bandmates hate him." 

"He's just different." 

Dave quirked an eyebrow. "He's an ass, admit it."

"I already agreed with you, dude," Brian said. They sat in silence for a few minutes. "Anyway, this isn't the point. The point is that you need inspiration. And we're in New York tonight and we don't have a show. What do we do when we're in New York City and don't have a show?" Brian stood up and threw his arms up. "We go out and party. Why?"

"Because we're young and attractive," Dave said with little enthusiasm. "We sound like girls."

Brian sat back down and shook his head. "You are pathetic, man. You are." Dave just shrugged.

*

"Isn't he lovely?" Lane Kim-Lopez asked her oldest friend in a dreamy voice. Her new husband, José, had just wandered away with his bandmate Henry Costa's partner Kyle to get drunk. Kyle was the antithesis of any gay man Lane had ever met, and every time the two bands were in the same place, she made it a priority to get well and properly smashed with him because he was just so fun. Henry actually bugged her more than she was willing to admit to anyone, including herself.

"Wow, Lane," Rory Gilmore said slowly, choosing her words carefully, "I haven't met someone that rude since my first week at Yale."

Lane's face fell. "That's what everyone says," she said sadly. "Everyone hates him."

"I'm sorry, Lane. I'm glad you like him." Rory actually wasn't glad, but she had to say she was. Personally, she thought Lane's love life since her breakup with Dave had been full of jerks like José, but at least José was good-looking. That way, his rudeness could be temporarily made tolerable. He had nice hair. It looked soft. Lane had dated some real dogs, too. 

"I do, really. He's not a jerk to me." Lane sighed and took a sip of her martini. They were sitting at a table in the bar area of one of the top nightclubs in the City, She's So Halogen. The table was a cobalt glass surface over a silver metal swirly thing on a stick. It matched all the other tables. Nearby tables were occupied by some other young celebrities, actors and musicians and the occasional athlete. Rory's date for the night, a shallow and very attractive socialite named Thomas, was leaning against the bar talking to a man who looked like Le Bron James. Admittedly, it probably was the basketball prodigy, but with the dim lighting, it was hard to tell.

"That's all that matters, then, Lane." Rory tossed back the contents of her shot glass. "I love this place," she said, hoping to change the subject.

"Uh, yeah, me too." Lane suddenly sounded distracted. Rory looked at her and found her rigid and miserable. "I'm surprised Liam hasn't filleted him yet," she said. Quite confused, Rory followed her friend's line of vision to the doorway, where Lane's ex and bandmate Dave and that annoying Brian had just come in. Brian, who never missed a chance to try to pick Rory up with a lame line and a grin. She sighed herself.

"Why would Liam filet him?" This was a necessary question. Liam, being their brutish manager, would filet them for rather insignificant reasons sometimes.

"He's our lyric guy and he hasn't written a song in five months and we so do not have enough for the new album. Need I mention that we've been delaying releasing a new album for three years? The fans are starting to get antsy." Lane seemed different when Dave was around, she always had. Rory had never actually found out what exactly caused their breakup, but both parties seemed both regretful and relieved that it happened. Whatever it had been, it was five years in the past.

"Why can't the rest of you pick up his slack? I've known you to write lyrics," Rory said.

Lane shook her head. "That's why I love you, Ror," she said. "You aren't in a band, so you don't understand the politics. We can't all emulate the Beatles, now."

"That's just pathetic," Rory said, smirking. Lane had turned her chair away from where Dave and Brian were standing, but Rory could still see them. And it seemed Brian had caught sight of her. He was gesturing towards her to Dave, who was smiling faintly, but not looking where Brian was pointing. 

"Maybe it is," Lane admitted. "But that's just how it is. Plus Dave's got that knack for words." Lane brightened suddenly. "Kinda like you. You didn't tell me about your new book. How was the release party?"

Rory sighed and sank deeper into her chair. Luckily, it was upholstered in pale blue linen. "It went fine, except Julian had to show up." Lane nodded knowingly. "Why does he insist on bothering me? We broke up eight years ago, for God sakes. He's been married and divorced since then, too."

Rory covered her face with her hands. Lane's husband chose that moment to return, and dragged her away with the excuse that he wanted her to meet someone. Left alone and feeling awkward, Rory sat up straighter and ordered another drink.

*

"Who's the girl over there, in the bar, with the dark hair?" Dave asked Brian. They were standing on the outskirts of the dance floor, watching and talking. 

Brian looked over from his previous amusement (a scrawny blonde model with low-rise pants and a thong) to see what Dave was talking about. "Dude, there's a bunch of brown-haired girls in the bar." He pointed to one with a red shirt on. "That one?"

Dave shook his head. "The one sitting down at the table on the edge, with the sparkly blue shirt on."

Brian searched the crowd, finally seeing a girl who fit the description. "Her?" he asked, pointing. The girl was looking at them and smirking faintly, but talking to the other girl she was with. "That's Rory Gilmore." Dave raised his eyebrows, and looked away, back towards the crowd of dancers. "We should go talk to her."

"The other girl with her is Lane," he said. "She's about as mad at me as Liam is."

"But Rory's over there. I like Rory, so, whatever you do, I'm going over there." Brian was whining. Dave was of the opinion that few things were as bad as a whiney man. "Are you coming?" Brian asked. The one, true Brian characteristic. He always needed backup when he wanted to go talk to a girl. It made Dave feel stupid, usually, because Brian didn't really need him. He always ended up just standing there like a moron while Brian schmoozed his way along with the girl in question.

"Yeah, I guess," Dave said, following behind.

To his relief, Lane's asshole husband came up and spirited her away before they got there. Rory looked kind of lost, sitting there by herself, sipping absently at the pina colada the waitress had just delivered. She looked up just as Brian, followed not that far behind by Dave, approached her table. She mustered up a smile and invited them to sit with her.

"Don't mind if I do," Brian said. He took Lane's vacated chair, looked down into the half-empty martini glass there, and plucked the olive out. He held it up to Dave for inspection, but Dave just gave him a slightly disgusted look. Brian shrugged and popped it into his mouth, thinking nothing of it.

"How are you, Rory?" Dave asked. He had his typical smile on his face.

"I'm fine. A little worn out, but good." 

"I read that new book of yours on the plane here," he said. She perked up at the mention of her work. "Pretty good stuff. I've always liked realistic things like that."

She smiled nervously. "Do you think it was a little too. . . graphic in places? Like the parts where he's shooting up?" Dave wanted to hug her. He felt a lot of artists, and she was the only one he could honestly say always seemed unsure of her work. 

"It was perfect. A little surprising, though. Who would'a thunk Rory Gilmore would be writing about a heroin addict." Dave grinned. Brian glared at him.

"It's not about the addict so much as it is about his salvation through the girl he falls in love with," Rory said. "Plus it was fun to write. A little sad, because I had to actually talk to junkies for research, but still fun."

"What are you doing in New York?" Brian broke in. He was obviously perturbed that Dave had stolen his conversation with a pretty girl. "Don't you live in Boston?"

She and Dave looked at each other strangely. "Um. . . no. I haven't lived there since Lane and I shared an apartment." That bespoke how long ago that had been. Lane had moved out of her apartment with Rory and into Dave's two years before she and Dave broke up.

Realizing his mistake, Brian flushed. "So where do you live now?"

"I have a house in Cape May, New Jersey, but I spend too much time up here in the city so I have an apartment here, too." She smiled, thinking about her beachside cottage, tucked on a back street near Sunset Beach, away from the tourist area of downtown (if it can be termed downtown). She wanted to set a book there in Cape May, but she couldn't come up with a plot for it, since the town screamed 'Romantic Getaway' and she was no good at love stories.

Of course, poor Brian figured she was smiling at him, which only encouraged him. Dave flagged down the waitress and ordered a bottle of beer for his 'idiot friend', it didn't matter what brand or type, and a double shot of Captain Morgan in a Diet Coke. He also told her not to let his glass empty. The girl was not immune to the fact he was a famous guitarist, and seemed willing to do pretty much whatever he wanted. He was stating to develop a headache.

"So, Dave, Lane tells me you're having writer's block," Rory said, trying to forget Brian was there.

Dave smiled nervously and wiped his hands on his pants. "Did she, huh?" he said, more to himself. "That's Lane. Always running me down." He shook his head and adjusted his tie. "She's right, though. I haven't written anything album-worthy in months."

Brian watched him curiously, but was distracted when the waitress brought them their drinks. She had red hair and a shiny smile. "Well, hello, there."

"Um. . . hi," she said shyly. 

"I'm Brian Newman. You are?"

"Stacia Becker." She looked down, genuinely embarrassed. Dave and Rory stopped their own conversation for a moment to watch Brian flirt with the poor little thing.

"Oh, honestly, Brian," Dave broke in. "The girl's probably not even legally allowed to serve alcohol. Let her alone." Rory covered her mouth with her hand to hide a smile. Brian glared at him, and Stacia blushed even more furiously. Dave shrugged and turned back to Rory. "Anyway, I just haven't felt inspired lately." 

Rory laughed out loud. "Don't I know how that is. Before this last book, I'd had block for a year. My editor was getting pretty pissy with me, and then. . . Bam! Inspiration struck one very yucky night when I was stuck in traffic between Sayreville and Perth Amboy."

Dave snickered. "You got the idea for _A Melted Crayon_ while sitting in traffic? That's classic." 

"Yes, fabulous," Brian broke in, using the sort of voice that betrayed the fact he didn't especially think it was fabulous at all. "Maybe you should give Dave pointers. Anyway, if you'll excuse me. Dave, I'll see you at rehearsal tomorrow. Rory, always a pleasure."

"I'm sure it is," she said demurely.

He looked at her for a moment, picking up on her sarcasm but not willing to waste time commenting on it. "Good night."

"Night," Dave said, waving him off.

Brian got up and allowed Stacia to lead him away towards the bar. He didn't look back.

Rory took another sip of her drink. "Wasn't that charming of him?" she mused. 

"That's Brian, all right," Dave agreed. 

"He's always like that, too, isn't he?" she asked.

"Always."

They both took a sip of their drinks and sat there awkwardly for a minute. 

"This is fun," Rory said, glancing up at him.

He stared at her for a moment, then his face split up into a huge grin. "Oh, God, I was hoping you'd notice. I'm used to girls who notice things like that and I was afraid that you wouldn't and we'd just sit here staring at our glasses all night, not sure of what we should do or say next. Because, well, that would suck."

Rory laughed. "You ramble about as much as I do."

"You're pretty interesting. I can see why you and Lane are friends."

She feigned a pout. "You couldn't tell before? I'm offended, Rygalski. Truly, truly offended." She reached over and stole an ice cube out of his glass and popped it into her mouth.

"Well, isn't that just the common thread of the night, then?" he said with a smirk. "Let's all eat something out of someone else's glass."

"Well, what fun is it to settle for your own when someone else has an equally, if not more so, delectable thing in front of them. You get bonus points if you pluck the thing out of a moving person's glass."

"You and your mother play this game at parties, don't you?" he asked.

Rory smiled evilly. "What do you think we did at Lane and José's wedding, talk to the Lopezes? You are a crazy one, Dave." She finished her drink. "Okay, I need to get out of this place. Want to come?" 

"Well, I should probably wait for Brian," he said noncommittally. Rory gave him a look. "What are you going to do?" 

She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'll go find another club, or I might go home and sleep, or write, or go to an all-night pancake place and have a stack with blueberry syrup. I don't know." She got up and pulled on her jacket, ready to leave. She turned at last to him. "Coming?"

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. Her offer was too good to resist. "Yeah." He tossed back the rest of his Cap'n Coke and followed her through the club.

--- chapter finis

Tinuviel Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 21 June 2003**


	2. Chapter Two

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Two

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- Thank you so much for the overwhelming support for this fic! I was afraid no one would read it, or I would get loads of flames from those of you Lane/Dave shippers. Thank you so much for pleasantly surprising me! If you offered to beta, I'm sorry I wasn't able to get back to you as of yet. This chapter was read over by Celewyn Evenstar, who doesn't exactly watch GG, but she's an English major. Those are always good to have around. Thanks due to Cel.

*

__

Later that night. . .

"You know, I've been in the band since I was a junior in high school. We've been famous since I was twenty. I've lived in this city since I was twenty-one. And, in the past nine years, I have never once seen any of the things you showed me tonight," Dave said, looking at Rory appreciatively. She beamed up at him.

"Don't you have a new respect for the machine?" she asked.

"Definitely. I didn't even know some of that stuff existed."

They were standing on the front stoop of her building. The sky was starting to grow light, but neither Dave nor Rory was really tired. For the first time, she noticed what he was wearing. "Dave, why are you wearing a tie?"

He looked down and shrugged. "Because it seemed silly to wear the shirt without one. I'm not Michael Vartan and this isn't a Drew Barrymore movie."

Rory giggled. . . well, not 'giggled' specifically, but made some sort of a laughing noise. "There's your first true pop culture reference for the night. You just happen to be about fifteen years too late." She dug around in her purse for her key card and eventually found it wrapped up in a roll of five dollar bills. "Do you want to come up?" she asked.

"I don't know. It's starting to get light out." He pointed at the sky. 

"So it is," she said faintly, as if noticing it for the first time. Then she turned back to the door. "All the more reason for you to come up. My cat will love you forever if you do."

"With an offer like that, how could I refuse?"

She jammed the card into the slot. It gave her a red light. "Damn it." She tried again. She ended up trying four times before the temperamental device allowed them entrance. "Sometimes it takes longer than that," she explained as she led him across the lobby. Her heels clicked on the marble floor. "Hello, Rita," she greeted the concierge behind the desk, a tired-looking woman with bleached blonde hair and a maroon vest.

"Morning, Ms. Gilmore," Rita called out half-heartedly. She was reading something.

"Reading another story about a darkly-handsome titled British rake, approximately thirty years of age, with a troubled past and a thing about ejaculation although he has a lot of sex falling in love with a spirited, twenty-one year old virgin from a loving, but financially troubled family?" Rory asked with a smirk.

"Oh shut up," Rita said good-naturedly. "This one's set in France."

"Someday, Rita, I will convert you from the dark side of literature."

"We'll see, Ms. Gilmore," Rita said.

Rory rolled her eyes and then gestured to Dave to follow her to the elevators. "There's a couch inside," she said in a conspiratorial whisper after she'd punched the up arrow button. His shiny, gunmetal blue silk tie reflected the orange light of the button. 

"Really? A full couch? That's impressive. I don't think the elevators in my building even have a _chair_. I feel shorted now," he said. He looked down and started to fidget with his tie.

"You should. Your building probably cost more than mine."

The doors opened, an older woman in jogging clothes stepped off, and they got on in her wake. "Morning, Mrs. Porthos," Rory said to the woman.

"Oh, good morning, Ms. Gilmore," Mrs. Porthos replied. She looked Dave up and down and grinned. "Looks like you're going to be having more fun than I will." On that, the doors slid closed and she walked away.

"That was sexual innuendo! Rory, that woman just made an insinuation," Dave said, slightly aghast. He'd never been insinuated about by a perfect stranger at five thirty in the morning before. 

"You're a prude," Rory said. "That's just Mrs. Porthos. She's always like that. You should have seen her when I was dating Beau Murphy, the model guy. She kept insinuating that he's gay-- he's actually bisexual-- and I think she was a contributing factor to our breakup."

"Oh my," Dave said. A pause ensued. "What floor do you live on?"

Rory looked at the pad of illuminated numbers on the wall. "The one that's glowing the brightest," she said. "Seventeen."

"Oh, right. Silly question." He turned around to survey the spacious elevator. "That is quite a couch, there. When you said couch, I was thinking more along the lines of love seat. But that's definitely a couch."

"You doubted me?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "I'm hurt. Stung, actually. I shan't ever recover." She fanned herself and her fake Southern accent.

"That's ridiculous," he admonished. He retreated back to the couch and gingerly sat down. "It's very comfortable, too." It was upholstered in cream-colored velvet and had pale green velvet piping at the seams to match the decor of the elevator, and by extension, the entire building.

"It's very, very comfortable, actually," Rory said. "The most comfortable couch in the world."

"You're mocking me. How dare you mock me?" he said, trying not to laugh at something he didn't consider to be all that funny. 

"Me?" she said with perfect innocence. "Mock you? Where would you get an idea like that?"

"You're still doing in, you demon," he said.

The doors slid open to reveal a hallway, decorated in-- what else?-- creams, pale greens, and mauve-ish pinks. The hallway was long and ran the whole length of the building and ended with a small window and a pretty vase of flowers. The funny thing was, there were only four doors along the entire length. 

"Those are some big apartments," he said, his eyes wide. 

"They're even bigger one floor up, only two to a floor," she said, leading him to the second door on the left. "I love this building."

"I'm starting to love this building, too," he said with a grin. She got out her key card again and began a five-minute-long battle with the lock on her door. Dave stood back, leaning against the opposite wall to be exact, and watched. She had a welcome mat in front of her door that had a big blue coffee cup print on it. The letters of 'welcome' were spelled out in white on the cup's side. "Cute mat," he said.

"Oh, yeah. I found it when I was doing research for _Blackbird_ in New Orleans. At a flea market, actually. New Orleans is a crazy-- You evil thing! I demand you let us in." She started to just pound on the door, the card still in the red-lit slot. 

"Have you tried 'Open Sesame?'" Dave offered. 

She shot him a venomous look. "My card is scratched, so sometimes it doesn't work."

"Why don't you get a new one, then?"

"Because, they cost fifteen dollars to replace, and this is my fourth one in two years." She flushed and turned back to the door.

"Right," he said, looking down at his feet. His left shoe was scuffed from when he tripped getting into Brian's car earlier that night. He tripped over stuff a lot. He was quite a clumsy boy.

She tried the card again, and the result was the same. "You know, why don't you try it. It clearly hates me."

"Um. . . okay," he said. He pushed off of the wall and took the proffered card. He stuck it into the slot once and quickly pulled it out again. Immediately, the light turned green, the door buzzed, and the dead bolt retracted. He gave her a superior look.

She glared at him. "Even my door likes you better than me. This is so unfair."

"Shut up and go in," he told her.

"Bossy, bossy," she said absently, turning the doorknob and pushing the heavy steel door open. A fat, furry orange head poked out. "Vladmir!" she shrieked and stooped down to snatch up what turned out to be an enormous cat. The largest cat Dave had ever seen up close. He had big, sleepy green eyes.

"Your cat is Russian?" he asked, looking at the ball of fur.

"With a buzz," she said. They entered and she set the cat down. He waddled away.

"That cat is the perfect size of most beach balls, Rory," he said. 

She didn't respond. In fact, she seemed to have disappeared. The entryway was shadowy, so Dave couldn't really tell what the apartment looked like, but he was fairly sure he would be impressed.

"My mother got him for me when he was a kitten a few years ago, and we named him after that Vladmir cartoon off those tee shirts. You know, the line with the fat orange cat that laughs at this stick figure on crutches?"

"Oh, right," Dave said. "But I'm not sure your cat could justify laughing at anyone. He's practically got his own zip code. His own climate, actually." 

The lights suddenly flipped on. Dave jumped and blinked. He looked around and, as predicted, was impressed by the tasteful and eccentric decor. The floor was dark wood, worn and obviously original to the building. There was a sheepskin rug in the middle of the main room, in front of a big navy blue couch. There weren't really defined rooms so much as designated areas. There was a spiral wrought iron staircase on either side of the entry hall going up to two loft bedrooms. Both staircases were littered with discarded clothes. To the right of the hall was a kitchen area, to the left was door to an office. Farther back, there was a bathroom and a wide open space with a dining room table and eight matching chairs. The back wall was made up of tall windows with blue gossamer curtains. On pretty much every empty space of wall there was a bookcase, stuffed to maximum capacity with books of all sizes.

She seemed to have gone into the kitchen, so he walked in that direction. The kitchen was beautiful, and looked well lived in (although the stove looked rather neglected). A laptop computer was open but on standby on the island in the middle of the room. Several stacks of miscellaneous papers littered most of the rest of the surface. The counters were made of pale beige granite. The tile floor gleamed almondish white. The cabinetry was wood to match the floor in the rest of the apartment. Her appliances were brushed stainless steel, and the entire surface of the refrigerator was papered with bits of paper and photographs.

She was sitting on the counter beside a double-well stainless sink, eating a purple Popsicle. The right side of the sink was quite full of dirty dishes. She grinned at him when she spotted him. Vladmir was below her feet, lapping water from a blue ceramic bowl. "What do you think?" she asked.

"It's very you," he said. "It's much more charming than mine."

"Yeah, but you're never in yours, always touring," she pointed out. "I'm here approximately twenty-five weeks out of the year. My house in Cape May is a disaster."

"I can imagine," he said. "It's controlled mess, though. It's exactly what I would expect from you, actually. I would be disconcerted if it was cleaner."

She grinned and tossed the empty Popsicle stick into the sink beside her. "I have track lighting, too. It's a newer addition, so I'm still not very used to it." She hopped down (nearly landing on Vladmir's tail) and bounced over to him. She grabbed his hand and dragged him bodily out into the main room. "My mother is opposed to my rug, which I can kind of agree with, but it's not real sheepskin. No sheep died to put it there!"

He looked down at the plush white rug. "It looks real."

"I paid enough for the thing, it damn well better look genuine," she said. She tugged him in the direction of her office, and stubbed her toe on the corner of the glass-top coffee table. Cursing under her breath, she flipped on the light and proudly presented him with her favorite room. 

It was small, tucked into a niche roughly ten feet wide by eight feet long, windowless, and rather dark. The walls were papered with some semi-faded toile-patterned paper, and none of the furniture matched in the least. Personally, Dave didn't find the combination terribly charming, and he definitely wouldn't have willingly decorated it in such a way himself. However, he couldn't help but notice the comforting air the room contained.

"My mother says this room is depressing," she said, sitting down on a yellow leather armchair in the corner next to the door. "She's kind of right, actually, but I love it here anyway."

There was a bookcase along the back wall, filled beyond capacity, and a desk with a flat-screed monitor on it. The wastebasket next to the desk was overflowing, but the desktop was completely clear. He was willing to bet an exorbitant amount of money that the stacks of paper littering the kitchen counter usually inhabited this room.

He sat down on the revolving chair in the middle of the room for a moment and spun around a few times. She grinned at him and perched herself on a well-worn wooden stool nearby. "I wrote most of _Crayon_ in here, which probably is why the story's so citified."

He looked around the room and his eyes fell on a poster that seemed to be trying to hide behind the bookshelf. The only problem was, someone had carefully tacked one corner up so that the poster was tilted at a forty-five degree angle and the subject's head had vanished behind the shelves. "Rory, is that a poster of a naked man?" he asked seriously.

She turned a peculiar shade of pink and started to laugh self-consciously. "Um, well, sort of. Mom and Lane bought that for me a few years ago when I first got this apartment. They hung it up there, and I attempted to cover it up with the bookcase, but Mom caught me and tacked part of it up so I can't help but have my eyes land on naughty parts of his anatomy every time I want my dictionary."

"_Dic_tionary, indeed," Dave said, putting emphasis on the first syllable with an evil grin. She coughed to stifle another sound. "You could take it down, you know."

"No I couldn't." She was serious, resigned to the fact she would have Naked Man hanging there for eternity.

"Why not?"

"Because, inevitably Mom would know and she'd plaster the whole place with other pictures from Playgirl. Trust me. It's better to have one half-hidden behind a bookcase than fifty thousand littering every surface. I don't really want visitors thinking I'm some sort of perv." She shrugged. "Besides, he's quite nice to look at."

Dave shook his head. "I think I've got a little on him," he said slowly.

She looked at him strangely, eyes widened. "Um, that's lovely. Congratulations."

"Thanks," he said. "It's completely light out now." He was looking out through the doorway, out the windows across the apartment. Rory raised her eyebrows and leaned forward to see for herself.

"Wow, so it is," she said, sounding somewhat disappointed.

"I have to be at rehearsal at two," he said.

"Do you have a show tonight?" she asked. She couldn't remember. She was finally starting to feel tired.

He shook his head. "No, but we still have to do the rehearsal thing." They both stood and walked towards the door. "Say, do you want to go out to dinner or something tonight?" he asked, a hopeful smile on his lips.

She hugged him around his middle, suddenly too tired to raise her arms enough to put them around his neck. "I'd love to," she said. "I had a lot of fun ton-last night."

"Me too," he said.

They stood there, arms around each other, for just a minute too long. The mood in the air shifted, he pulled back, and for a second she thought he was going to lean down a bit and actually kiss her. But he didn't. He pushed her hair out of her face and behind her ears, then grinned and detached himself completely. 

"I'll pick you up out front at and quarter after eight, okay?" he said, his hand on the doorknob.

Standing a few paces back, she smiled and nodded. "Of course. How should I dress? For dinner, I mean."

He thought for a moment. "Semi-formal, but still comfortable."

"You're going to wear another tie, aren't you?"

"Maybe," he said. "I fail to see why that's so wrong."

She rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you still don't get it. You are just not a tie type of person. You're too. . . carefree-looking. You're too-- for lack of a better word from this severely sleep-deprived brain-- fun."

Fun. Dave could deal with being fun. He'd have preferred something a little more flattering and ego-stroking, but he'd settle for fun for now. He nodded. "So I'll see you tonight."

"Tonight," she confirmed.

After the door shut behind him, she sagged against the wall at her side. Had she really almost kissed him?

*

"I'm trying to decide which is bigger, my ego or my dick," José Lopez was saying to Henry, but Henry didn't seem remotely interested in what his bandmate was saying.

Nearby, José's wife Lane was sitting, reading an issue of Cosmo. "Definitely your ego," she said. "Dave's got about four inches on you down there."

José and Henry both turned to her with raised eyebrows, evidently having forgotten she was there. José seemed rattled for a moment, then swallowed and smiled grimly. "Lane, baby, this is not the issue."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Are you writing a song?"

"Dude," Henry broke in, "that would be a good line. _I don't know which one's bigger. . ._ We have to tell the other guys about this. Gary could probably get us a bass line in ten minutes." He stood up and left the room, singing the line in various ways. José watched him go, then snapped his eyes back to Lane.

"What the fuck was that about?" he snapped.

She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't raise her eyes off the page she was reading. "I was stating a fact. Dave is well endowed. You're just an ego with legs and nice hair." She looked up and adjusted her glasses. "But, that's what I love about you. You're confident."

That seemed to placate him. She delivered her lines with such perfect sincerity, anyway. "Thank you," he said finally. "What are you going to do during the show tonight?"

She shrugged. "Rory and I were planning on going out, since we leave after tomorrow night's show and I won't see her again until March. And, before you say anything, it would be a girls' night out thing, only completely innocent with large amounts of alcohol involved. I intend to find her a man before I leave."

José nodded, his hair falling into his eyes with the movement. After raking it backwards, he regarded her fully. "Katie's bringing Jax by tonight," he said. Katie was his beautiful former girlfriend. Jax was their nine-year-old son. He favored his father heavily, having dark hair and dark eyes. His mother was red-haired with blue eyes. Lane was somewhat convinced that José never really got over the fact he had been in love with Katie. She felt for a fact many of his band's songs were about their relationship and subsequent breakups. She also felt Katie thought he was an idiot. (His band had actually done a song about that very subject, Katie contributing her own lyrics and vocals to it).

"I guess you're going to want father-son bonding time," Lane said. She smiled perkily. "It all works out in the end."

"I should go help them out. I'll see you later," he said, rising and leaving the room. He kissed her cheek on his way.

She smiled to herself and turned the page.

---chapter finis

José is meant to be crude. The real José isn't quite so extreme, but fiction is all about exaggeration.

Vladmir, the cat that laughs at a stick figure on crutches, is a cartoon character invented by yours truly to go along with my friend Amy's cartoon of "Cripple!Andy." Andy is a poor, stupid boy who broke both ankles this past year on two separate occasions. He also lost his baseball scholarship because he couldn't play this year. Dumb, dumb. In the cartoon, stick figure!Andy is always being laughed at by Vladmir, hence the slogan, "Vladmir laughs at cripples." Anyway, Amy and I are starting a tee shirt company, and C!A and Vladmir have their own division. We even did a special prom edition this year. We didn't do a graduation edition because Andy, like the moron he is, failed English IV and had to take summer school-- not graduating with the rest of the senior class. ::shakes head:: We may get around to setting up a website for our company, affectionately called Sparky the Toast, if we're not too lazy.

Tinuviel Henneth/ _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 25 June 2003**


	3. Chapter Three

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Three

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). Dawson and Jack belong to Kevin Williamson, although they're just as fictional in this world as they are in the real one. Vladmir and Sparky the Toast belong to me.

****

Author's Note-- This chapter was fun. Parts of it are too wordy, though, and parts of it aren't wordy enough. _Sacre bleu._ See end note.

*S6

Rory stood on one foot, leaning over her bathroom counter with her nose six inches from the mirror. She was carefully applying mascara. She was already dressed, wearing a stunning deep plum, off-the-shoulder number with a straight hem ending just above her knees. She was wearing a necklace made of a chunk of amber set in with gold sunrays coming off of it. 

She stuck the wand back in the tube and twisted the cap shut, tossing it into the makeup bag open beside the sink. She grabbed a brush and dragged it through her hair once or twice to ensure its smoothness, then left the bathroom. She flipped the light out as an afterthought.

She sat down on the couch for a moment so she could prop her feet up on the coffee table to inspect the toenail polish. It passed muster. It was a purple shade to match her dress. She was relieved, because she hadn't been paying attention and had painted them before getting in the shower instead of after.

The intercom on the wall near her door buzzed to life. "Rory?" Dave's electronically altered voice echoed through the apartment. She jumped up and slid (wearing hose on wood floor) over to the door.

She punched the Talk button. "Okay. Do you want to come up for a few minutes, or should I just come down?"

"I've got a cab waiting. Will you be down in the next two minutes?"

She thought for a moment. "I just have to grab my shoes, wrap, and purse. I'll be right down."

"Okay. Hurry, though. He's Bengali and he's kind of weird."

She grinned as she slid back up the hall to the chair (matched to her couch) where her wrap and purse were sitting. The low-heeled gold silk mules she planned on wearing were parked nearby. She patted Vladmir, who was laying on the back of the chair rather precariously, on the head and said, "Don't wait up."

On the elevator on the way down, she adjusted the wrap around herself, fidgeted with her hair, and curled her toes under. She briefly wondered if she shouldn't have worn her hair up, if she shouldn't have worn more comfortable shoes. When the doors parted, she took a deep breath and stepped out into the lobby. Dave was standing with his back to the elevator, talking to Rita at the concierge's desk. Rita spotted Rory and cleared her throat. He turned around and looked quite surprised when he saw her. 

"Oh my God," he said pleasantly. "You look marvelous."

She blushed, pulling the wrap tighter around herself. "Not so bad yourself, Mr. Tie-wearer." He was dressed in a shiny, bluish-black wool Armani suit, dark gray shirt, and plum silk tie. His shoes were black and very glossy.

"When you said the dress was dark purple, I asked so I could coordinate my tie with it," he explained. 

"It's a pretty good match," she said.

"This building is wonderful. The doorman was so friendly, and you have a concierge desk. I've never been in an apartment building with a concierge desk." She smiled and let him rave about her digs while they walked out to the taxi he had waiting at the curb.

"So, where are we headed?" she asked once they were inside.

"Have you ever been to The Shrapnel Fairy?" he asked. 

She stared at him for a moment. "Everything I hear that name I wonder what sort of person names their five-star restaurant that. I've never actually been there, though. Have you?"

"Just once, last time we were in the City for an extended period of time. I had this scrod thing with onions and spinach. It was absolutely superb." 

She watched the city lights gradually flicker to life as they passed. There were people in an ocean on the sidewalks. They didn't talk much for the car ride.

When they got there, Dave paid the fare, with an extra-large large tip for the weird Bengali driver, and then helped her out. She felt very strange indeed stepping out onto the curb like some sort of movie star. Because he was Dave Rygalski, rock-god guitarist, and this was a fairly exclusive place owned by a celebrity, there were photographers. Paparazzi, if you will, eager to a fault for some juicy tidbit. She and Dave posed for two pictures, she smiled with her teeth showing in both of them. It was starting to get very cold outside, so after that they just hurried for the door.

The doorman nodded and let them inside, closing the door firmly behind them once they were in. A tall maitre d' with salt and pepper hair stood at a pedestal. The _pince-nez _perched on his nose bespoke a certain quality he possessed. He motioned Dave to approach the pedestal.

"Hello," Dave said in his most winning voice, "Reservations for two under the name Rygalski. Dave Rygalski, actually."

The maitre d' scanned the list of names in front of him, found their name, and highlighted it with an orange marker. "All right," he said in a nasally New England accent. "For nonsmoking, yes?"

"Definitely," Dave said. He frequently found himself playing the role of lone nonsmoker in the music business. Lane, also a nonsmoker, and he had always felt like the odd ones out at galas and award shows because of this.

"Right this way," the maitre d' said, taking two menus out of a box attached to the wall behind him and began to walk to the left, into the dining room. The Muzak was playing an old Janis Joplin song. He pulled out Rory's chair for her, set the two menus down, and wished them a good meal.

They perused their menus for a few moments when their server came over. She was very small, scarcely bigger than the average twelve-year-old, with short blonde hair and a bright smile. She was about their age. "Hello," she said in a voice that seemed too deep for her, "my name is Amanda. Welcome to the Shrapnel Fairy. Tonight's special is roasted green peppers stuffed with Italian vegetables, Gorgonzola, and prime rib. It comes with a side of bowtie pasta in a light tomato cream sauce. Tonight's soup is a lobster bisque with cilantro." She paused and smiled. "What can I get you to drink?" 

Dave looked at Rory. "Do you want wine?"

"I don't drink wine," she replied. "A coffee for me," she said to Amanda.

"Cream?"

"No thank you." Rory abhorred cream in her coffee.

"Sir?" Amanda asked, turning to Dave.

"I'll have a glass of white Zin, please, and a glass of water with lime." He smiled. Amanda left the table to get their drinks. "What sounds good to you?" he asked Rory.

She shook her head. "I don't know. It all sounds good."

"I'm leaning towards escargot and then tarragon salmon," he said. He didn't sound terribly sure. He looked up. "What do you think?"

"You, uh, really like them seafoodies, huh?" she said nervously. "I think paella. My mom and I ate a lot of paella when we were in Spain. It's the only thing we could pronounce."

"There's a story there, isn't there?" he asked. He closed his menu.

She closed hers as well. "Oh yes."

Amanda came back around with their drinks and took their orders. Rory also ordered a salad with a pesto cream dressing. 

"Okay, when did you start eating vegetables that weren't previously dunked in boiling fat and then dipped into onion dip?" He took a sip of his wine. She watched the pink liquid swirl around in the glass. He looked down, too. "What?"

"When did you become all worldly-sophisticate, Mr. White Zinfandel?" she replied, smiling. She took a hearty sip of her coffee. She coughed. "Oh, my God. That is the worst coffee I've ever had."

"How unfortunate," he said. "So, how is your mom?"

Rory shrugged. "She's my mom. She and the twins are doing pretty well-- speaking of the twins, their tenth birthday is next Wednesday. I have to drive up for the day. She's coping, but I know she still hurts. I heard her crying in the bathroom last time I was there." Rory looked down at her fingernails. The shift in mood was nearly tangible. "It's so hard to imagine that he's just. . .gone. You know?"

Dave sighed. "No, actually. I've never lost a parent."

She shook her head. "My real dad lives in Boston," she said. "With his other family. That's not a big deal; I only consider him as my father in technicality. Luke's the real father figure in my life. Twenty-five years of him always being there and suddenly it was, like, 'Holy shit. He's in a box in a hole in the ground. My mother hasn't stopped crying in a week. My little brother and sister are only five years old. This isn't _fair_.' But it's been five years now, and it's gotten easier." She smiled sadly and looked up, locking gazes. "His sister, Liz, died last year. Apparently they were genetically predisposed to it. Liz's son Jess-- you remember him-- actually came in person to tell Mom about Liz."

"The rebel himself?" Dave asked, trying to remember if he ever actually met and spoke with Jess. It was kind of strange to look back on high school, on Stars Hollow. It was very strange, in fact. He had honestly tried to forget. The memories always stung. He still missed his times with Lane, how they were before the fame worm got under their skins and rotted their flesh and personalities from the inside out.

"The rebel himself. He went and grew up, though. Very uncharacteristic. Married some pretty girl in California. They've got a kid, I think. He writes, too, sometimes."

"Am I the only one here aware of the fact that this conversation has gotten completely depressing?" he said suddenly. He bugged his eyes out and cocked his head to one side.

Rory started to laugh. "Thank you," she said. "I really need something not revolting to drink. This coffee truly is terrible."

Dave reached across the table and gingerly picked up the delicate mug. He took a small sip, swirled it around inside his mouth, then swallowed. She looked at him expectantly when he didn't immediately react. "You're right," he said, finally pulling a disgusted face. "That was awful. Completely, truly the most awful cup of coffee I've ever had. I've had a lot of bad coffee in my life, too."

"Hotel coffee on a hangover?" she supplied, grinning. She was quite charmed by the fact he took it upon himself to take a sip of her coffee to confirm that she wasn't nuts or pathetically finicky.

"Oh, you have no idea. The Waldorf-Astoria has bad coffee, too. At least I think so. What is it with expensive places and bad coffee?" Amanda returned with his appetizer and her salad. "Any insights, Amanda?" he asked.

"On what, sir?" she asked, setting his steaming snails in front of him. Rory stared at them for a moment, looking completely revolted.

"Why places that charge five dollars a cup notoriously have wretched coffee," he replied. He gestured towards Rory's coffee, which was sitting in front of him at the moment. "Take your coffee. We've both tasted it. It's bad. Sludgy yet fresh-brewed. Quite the anomaly, really." 

Too grossed-out to look at the escargot any longer, Rory looked up at the server to gauge her reaction to Dave's statement. She noticed that Amanda was staring at him strangely. "Dave, tone down the Dawson's Creek rambling. You're getting away from Dawson and moving full steam ahead into Jack territory."

He glared at her (albeit good-naturedly). "Well, you didn't speak up about it," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "I'd like a Long Island Iced Tea instead, please," she said to Amanda. "I'm thinking a lot more liquor than Coke."

Amanda smiled bewilderedly and took away the offensive cup. "I'll be right back," she said. 

Dave sat back and stared at his appetizer. "Wow, our first fight on our first date, over bad coffee. Amazing."

"We've even managed to terrify our waitress barely into the first course," she agreed, staring at her gourmet-looking salad.

He looked at her face, briefly, then at her salad. "That's far too pretty to eat," he said, gesturing towards it. She picked up her salad fork and let it hover over the top of the mound of lettuces.

"You're right," she said. Then she stabbed down and shoveled the bite into her mouth. "But I'm going to, anyway. Think of it as deforestation."

"That's sick, Rory. Very, very sick."

Amanda brought Rory's drink a moment later. "Your food will be up in a few minutes," she told them. She seemed wary of them.

"If my mom was here, she'd suggest we do something that could very well be considered mean by a stranger to that poor girl," Rory said. "It's funny to try and think up what she might say."

Dave rolled his eyes. "Eat your salad," he said.

"Eat your snails," she retorted. "I promise not to say anything if you shoot one across the dining room."

He grinned. "Want one?" he asked through a mouthful.

She made a face. "I'll stick to my veggies if you don't mind."

"I never thought I'd hear you say something like that," he said.

"I'm not going to disagree with you there," she replied.

----chapter finis

Amanda is a real person, too. She worked at the same restaurant I do, but was fired. It's nice to think that she'll be thirty-years-old in NYC with a dead-end serving job. The Shrapnel Fairy is what I would name my restaurant if I owned one. I would love to, actually. I love the industry.

This will be the last chapter posted until probably July 19. I will be going out of town to a Performance Theater program at Wright State University for two weeks, starting Sunday July 6. I may or may not post on Saturday, July 5. 

Thank you to Evie for being my beta, even though she didn't get a chance to read this chapter because I couldn't get my shit together in time. I wanted to get this posted before I got to busy with packing and stuff. And, in addition, thanks to Celewyn for being my mechanic. Thank you to everyone who offered their services. I've made a little list of names if I need someone to read something else over. You all rock.

Chapter dedicated to all the hierarchy of Harry Potter fics that were completely proven wrong and even silly by OotP. Those of us who write detached future fics are rejoicing. Also dedicated to anyone who has ever written a Hermione/Oliver fic. 

--T. Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 2 July 2003**


	4. Chapter Four

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Four

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- This chapter is a little on the short side. However, I think you might like it anyway. ::grins:: 

*

"This is the drunkest I've been since I was in college," Rory declared. They were in the middle of a burgundy-and-gold hallway on the twentieth floor of Dave's hotel. He was attempting to hold her up. She was about as rigid (and cooperative) as a damp silk shirt. To add to the problem, he was a bit beyond tipsy himself. They had fallen down on the elevator when it moved too fast for them (although no faster than it did any other time). He was almost positive he gave the cab driver a hundred dollar bill and told him to keep the change.

"That's wonderful, Rory," he said. His head was pounding already. He was dreading the morning. Mostly, though, he was focused on getting her into his bed. He, being a gentleman in all situations concerning women who get too drunk to think intelligibly and then lose their apartment key card, was going to sleep on the couch in the living area of the room. It was times like these he relished having money.

"Have you ever been this drunk?" she asked. He propped her against the wall and took his own card out to unlock his door. 

He looked at her for a moment, trying to figure her out. She was definitely a compulsive drinker. A compulsive consumer, actually. He hadn't thought it was possible to inhale rice with chicken and shrimp in it. She proved his entire belief system wrong. It actually made him feel silly when he didn't finish his entire piece of salmon. By the time their food was eaten, both had consumed a few more drinks than they probably should have. The conversation hit a lull only once. They ordered creme brulèe, ate half of it, paid, and left.

"Not in a while. I lived for a week on almond brittle, coffee, and hard liquor after Lane and Dickwad got married, though. Not pretty." He laughed. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. "Welcome to my humble, hotel room abode."

"Humble?" she scoffed, stumbling in. "It's bigger than my-- _hic_-- apartment."

"Well, I'm going to go wash my face," he said. He was hoping cold water would sober him up some. He wasn't eager to spend the night drunk in the same relative space as an intoxicated girl. He glanced over at Rory, but she had already sunk down onto the sofa and closed her eyes. He went on his way to the bathroom and flipped on the light. 

He stared at his reflection in the mirror for quite a long time, wincing at the image. He didn't just look plastered, he looked downright sick. Actually, sick is the precise word for how he was feeling. His skin was all blotchy and sallow; his eyes were reddish. He turned on the squeaky cold tap and cupped his hands to collect some of the water that gushed forth. He was halfway through with his second splash when he felt her brush past him. The bathroom was very cramped, sure, but not so much that she had to actually touch him when she went past.

She hopped up onto the counter. She had changed out of that spectacular dress and into a pair of his boxers and a Purist tee shirt. He could see the wheels turning in her head about the shirt. 

"Yes, I realize that's José's band," he said. He let the rest of the water he had been holding cupped in his hands run back into the sink. 

She looked down and started to laugh. "I didn't even notice. But now that you-- _hic_-- mention it, why do you have a Purist shirt?"

"It's got a quote on the back I thought was pretty amazing. 'Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.' The only deep thing I bet José ever came up with."

"Marilyn Monroe said it," Rory said, her voice somewhat flat. He looked at her, a small frown on his face. "I think that Marilyn would have known better than-- _hic_-- anyone, too. I'm not sure why Purist would have a slogan like that. They're all from Ohio, not-- _hic_-- California."

"You've completely demolished my entire belief system," he deadpanned to mask his certain disappointment at that notion. He found she was a walking contradiction. She was against a lot of the ideas he had previously held dear.

"Oh," she said, arching her eyebrows sweetly, "drat."

Dave reached behind her and pulled a towel off the rack. While he was so close, she reached up and touched his dripping face, gently with her fingertips. He stared at her for a moment, his gaze blank for the most part. He kind of froze, unsure of what she was going to do. She sat there, her face inches away from his, her fingers resting just below his right cheekbone. She wiped a few droplets off his jaw and brought her fingers close to her face to examine the mysterious wetness. 

His breathing became shallow as he watched her stare at the water. Those big blue eyes suddenly flicked back to his face and she touched him again, this time with her whole hand. He gently reached up and pulled her hand away from his face, placing it neatly in her lap. She seemed disappointed for a moment, about to get off the counter. He stopped her by placing his body in front of her, in between her knees. She looked up at him quickly, suspicious. He smiled, then hastily rubbed the towel over his face. When he was sure he had gotten enough of the water off, he threw the towel aside and grabbed her by the back of the neck, pulling her mouth to his. Her hands were instantly at his kidneys, pulling him closer to her. It also forced her to wrap her legs around him.

He made a frustrated growling sound in his throat because he couldn't seem to get her close enough. He had never kissed someone so intensely when she was sitting on a counter. He wasn't sure he really wanted to kiss someone in a bathroom on a counter. In that train of thought, he moved his hands down her sides to cup her under her buttocks. He pulled back a couple in inches, gave her a cheeky grin, then lifted her cleanly off the counter. She giggled and pulled his lips back to hers.

Having only been there one night previously, he was not familiar with the terrain of his hotel suite. En route to the bed, he tripped over a table leg and almost dropped her. He also stubbed his little toe on the bathroom door. The funny thing was, he didn't really notice the pain. She seemed to think if was funny that he injured himself.

Once they were in the vicinity of his bed, he let her down. The moment her feet touched the ground she was working on getting his tie off his neck, and then making sure it was properly thrown far across the room in a long purple strip. His shirt came next, ending up in a sad gray heap at their feet. She also made short work of the white wife beater he had on. She had never seen him shirtless before. At a pool party in college she'd gone to with he and Lane, he hadn't swum. He had kept his shirt on. Now that she had him all to herself for the moment, she wondered why he hid his body. He was small for a man, probably only a little taller than she was, and his frame was sturdy but still lithe. At the same time, by no means could he have possibly been described as "buff." Rory didn't especially care. It was good enough for her to run her hands over his chest, then down over his abdomen. He did not have a six pack, she was pleased to note.

As she explored the skin of his torso, he toyed with the bottom hem of her shirt. He wasn't sure if she had anything on under it, so he prepared himself for whatever he would be greeted with when she finally realized he needed her assistance at getting it up and over her head. Lane used to yell at him to be careful of her nose. Evidently, he was too zealous when it came to removing the other party's shirt.

Somewhere along the line it occurred to her that he was trying to take the Purist shirt off of her. She smiled to herself, kissed him desperately, and stepped back a bit. She took his hands in her own as he lifted it up. As soon as the offending garment was away and on the floor with his shirt, she meshed her mouth back over his. He stood stupidly for a moment before turning them around and pushing her down onto the bed. She began to undo his belt, but as he was on top of her, what he did mattered more. He bent down to kiss at her braless breast. She arched her back against him, but she didn't immediately encourage him. She moaned softly, and then went back to her previous task. She had the buckle undone and the pants down to his knees in a minute or two more. He moved his mouth back up to hers, locking eyes with her before she shut her own. He kicked the pants away. The buckle made a metallic clicking as it hit the floor.

She pulled back a moment and opened her mouth to say something but her cut her off. "Uh-uh, Rory. You are not going to rationalize your way out of this," he told her and kissed her again.

Much later, as they lay curled up together in a tangle of sheets in the throes of a mutual post-coital semi-consciousness, she worried about her stupid cat and smiled to herself because he hadn't been kidding about measuring up against her poster. Idly, he decided that she was the only woman he ever wanted to sleep with again.

*

Dave woke up kind of late the next morning. He rolled over to find the bed otherwise empty. His head vaguely hurt, but the hangover wasn't bad because he hadn't drunk all that much. It did, however, feel like he had several yards of cotton batting stuffed into his mouth. He looked around the room. Last night's hastily shed clothes were neatly folded. The purple silk tie he had chosen specifically to match her dress was hanging over the French balcony door handle. The door was slightly open, the tie fluttered in the New York City breeze. His shirt was folded so well it looked professional and sitting on the same chair her pretty purple dress had been draped over after she'd changed out of it into the short-lived bits of his clothes.

It wasn't hard to figure out that she was already gone. It made him kind of sad that she hadn't woken him up to say goodbye, but he reasoned that this was probably a bit of a shock to her (as it was to him), and that he would be seeing her later on at the show. Thinking about the show, however, made him kind of sad. Afterwards, their tour began, and he wouldn't be back in the City again for almost a year. He didn't want to think about such a thing. It wasn't as if he could ask her to come with him after only one night and two dates.

He got up and went into the bathroom. He washed his face and brushed his teeth. He combed his hair and then got dressed. He pulled his very ancient Chucks on and was about to leave when he crossed the room and shut the balcony door. He picked the tie up for a moment, marveling at the cool, slippery feeling of the silk against his fingertips. The damn thing had cost two hundred and seventeen dollars at Barneys, but was it ever pretty!

He looked away from the tie and let it return to its resting place over the handle. He left the room, making sure the key card was securely in his wallet. It would be just his luck that sometime over the course of the day he would lose it, but at least putting it directly into the wallet reduced the odds of that happening by a little bit.

He stopped in a small café nearby to get a tall cup of Chai tea, his favorite no-longer-trendy drink. He had never been able to really tolerate the taste of coffee unless suffering from a severe hangover. Being in a band, however, generally guaranteed that he would be hung over quite frequently, and consequently Dave had along the way acquired a mild tolerance for the stuff. Today, though, he wasn't in pain and he wasn't half-asleep. He got Chai tea instead.

Tea in hand, he hailed a cab and gave the address of his own apartment building. It mystified him why Liam, the band's paranoid-delusional and obsessive-compulsive manager, made them all stay in hotels, even when they were in cities where they had homes. Zach complained vocally about the injustice of that rule every time they were in Boston. Dave had never bothered to argue with it when they were in New York.

He used his real metal key to open the door, he put the tea down on the table by his bed, and then collapsed back on it. He closed his eyes for a moment, reveling in the comfort of his own bed, a bed he rarely got to enjoy. He was glad that in a year, the band would be taking a break. Too bad the break wouldn't be coming up sooner. For so long he had been looking forward to the non-stop year of touring they had coming up (America, then Europe and Japan). But now that he had someone to stay for, he couldn't. 

He wondered where she went after she left. He figured she probably went home and fed Vladmir, then went back to bed after a long, hot shower. It occurred to him after a few minutes that she had probably made a pit-stop at the Planned Parenthood on her way. He couldn't remember if they had used a condom or not. That made him think they probably didn't.

Of course, those thoughts led to others, like what would happen if she got pregnant. Dave didn't know what he would do in that case, except maybe prove Mama Kim right after all that he was your typical American boy after only one thing, and once he got it, he split and didn't look back, no matter the consequences for the poor unfortunate girl. Dave didn't really think he had to capacity to abandon his own child, but anything, he had found out more than once, was possible after a one night stand.

No, that isn't right. Rory was more than a one night stand. In the two days he had really, really known her, he already felt closer to her than he had felt with Lane for most of their relationship. But it was still a fledgling relationship, if it could even be termed that. It was no situation to bring a child into. It was kind of a Bebe Bell-Steven Tyler thing, except he wasn't fucked up on drugs, and she wasn't the slut of the rock 'n' roll world. 

He rolled over and buried his face into the bedspread to exorcise those thoughts. 

Then something struck him. He sat up slowly and looked around the room. He got up and went over to the desk. He shifted through the mounds of papers and books and fliers and CDs (so that's what happened to Brian's old Juliana Theory!). Finally, he found what he was looking for, a standard wire-bound, college-ruled Mead notebook. It was old, from his freshman year of college, so the pages were yellowed and the cover bent and its corners long gone. The back cover was full of Lane's inane little doodles; she had still been fun then-- and he had still really loved her. He found a pen in a drawer, took the cap off, and returned to the bed.

Two hours later, he was sitting Indian-style in the middle, with the sheets pulled up over his legs, the notebook open on his lap. The pen in his hand glided over the page, black ink verses and choruses came to life. It wasn't much of a song, but it was a song. It was the lyrics to a song, something he hadn't been able to pull out of his head in the longest time.

Yep, it was official. Rory was good for him.

-----chapter finis

I smell a conflict of interests. . .

I like writing Dave. I've planned out a very AU fic that features my bizarrely-adored Fag-Hag!Rory living with a sadly gay DJ (Dave, abbreviated), who happens to be her best friend, Jess', boyfriend. Insanity, confusion, Lane, and Tristan ensue.

My theater camp kicked ass. This chapter dedicated to Meredith for being a Dave fan, too!

--T. Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 20 July 2003**


	5. Chapter Five

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Five

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- I hate this chapter with a passion. The next one is so much better.

*S9

Lane Kim-Lopez was not accustomed to being jilted. She had never in her life been jilted. Her first and most serious boyfriend had not jilted her. The Korean she dated for a few months after him had not jilted her. Her husband had yet to do it. Yet her best friend seemed to do it constantly. She hated the feeling of waiting around for someone to show up, only to find several hours were wasted on someone who never comes.

Rory had made plans with her, damn it, and she had never come. José had gone to bed early, claiming a headache, and she and Jax stayed up late watching a movie on television. He was such a sweet little boy; nothing at all like his selfish, brooding father. He was very smart, too. His mother Katie was a small-stage actress, and he had grown up around her friends. She had been in an accelerated learning program in school, so Jax only knew highly intelligent adults. It had influenced him for the better, Lane thought.

When Rory did deign to appear at the venue, poking around backstage with an expressionless face and her all-access pass, Lane had ignored her for a few minutes. Finally, she couldn't bear the silence anymore. "What did you have to do that was more important than go out with your oldest friend?" Lane asked, her voice hurt.

Rory perked up and stared at her for a long time. An expression finally appeared on her face, one of regret and slight confusion. "Oh, Lane, I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was earnestly repentant. Lane wanted to hate her for it, but she felt she couldn't.

"It's okay," she said. "But what happened? I was really worried. I thought maybe you got mugged or kidnapped, or you got hit by a car and were lying in a coma in a hospital somewhere. You should have called."

Rory nodded sadly. "I know. I completely forgot about agreeing to go out with you."

"Who were you with, then?" Lane implored, genuinely curious as to who could possibly wrench forgetful-as-an-elephant Rory away from previously made plans.

"Um--" Rory faltered, wondering how she was going to phrase her news. "I was out with Dave, actually," she said gently.

Lane dropped the hairbrush she had been holding. She spun around in her chair to stare blankly at Rory. "As in Dave Rygalski?" she asked, quite bewildered and fairly sure she had misunderstood. Why would Rory--?

"Yeah, Dave Rygalski," Rory said, smiling sheepishly.

Lane sat back in a funk. She felt very well that it was ridiculous to feel territorial about him when she was married to someone else, but she still would have never expected Rory of all people to go after her ex. She wasn't sure if she should play the part of the good friend and as for details like she had with every other one of Rory's random hookups; Dave was such an entirely different variable. He was like a Greek letter, in Lane's mind, in a world full of standard English ones. Maybe a Russian character. "So," she said awkwardly, "did anything happen?"

Rory shrugged, sitting down on the other chair. "Define 'anything.'"

Lane glared at her. "Did you sleep with him?"

When Rory didn't answer right away, Lane swallowed and closed her eyes. Weren't some things sacred? Honestly, what gave Rory the right to go and sleep with Dave? It wasn't like Lane went out and screwed with one of Rory's exes (not that she hadn't wanted to once or twice). But, Lane reasoned, that was different. She and Dave had dated for seven and a half years. Rory's longest relationship to date was just shy of three years, with Dean Forester back in high school. 

"We may have had sex," Rory said noncommittally. She couldn't meet Lane's eyes.

"How can you 'may have had sex?' That's kind of a you did or you didn't kind of thing," Lane replied, trying to will herself out of the room and the subject. She was trying to will away negative thoughts. It was bad karma. She ought to be happy for them. It was about time Dave moved on. It was about time Rory found a keeper. But she couldn't find it in herself. 

"I got drunk last night," Rory replied. "I can't remember. I woke up in his bed, though, so I'm pretty sure of what happened."

Lane breathed a small sigh of relief. At least Rory being intoxicated cheapened the ordeal. It meant that the connection wasn't so strong. It meant that alcohol had been to blame. Excellent, maybe Lane could trick herself into believing that, too, but she felt that even when drunk Rory still didn't make stupid mistakes. "Is he as good as I remember?" Lane asked carefully, attempting to liven the conversation up a little. It was clear Rory felt bad about it. 

Rory looked up, her blue eyes all shiny with pre-tears. She smiled. "Um," she said uncertainly. "How good do you remember him being?"

Lane couldn't help but grin. "I kind of miss that," she admitted. "He's a very attentive lover."

"Isn't José?" Rory asked with an arched eyebrow. She did not agree or disagree with the question of Dave's prowess. 

Lane rolled her eyes. "It's not that he's bad. He's just so apathetic about everything, including sex. I'm always like, 'Damn it, José, I'm your wife. I expect a little more effort than what you're giving me.' He doesn't get it." Both women had to laugh at this.

A moment later, Rory asked, "Are you mad at me?" 

"Why would I be mad?" Lane asked. Her voice was pitched just a little too high. Rory caught it and felt ashamed all over again. But it wasn't in Rory's nature to question why Lane still thought she had some stake in Dave.

Rory truly couldn't come up with a response that wasn't completely insulting. She opened her mouth for a moment, then closed it again. "Nevermind. It was silly to think you'd be mad," she said. "After all, you and Dave broke up five years ago, you're married, and Dave deserves to be happy, too, right?

On that note, Rory got up and left the room. Lane stared after her, wondering. She really was more like José than she had previously thought.

*S10

"This is awesome, Dave," Zach said, staring at the slightly crumpled sheet of paper Dave had shoved under his nose a moment ago. While Dave played the guitar part he'd worked out for it, Zach read over the words. The words were good. They flowed, they had emotion, they were perfect. "You, like, grew some inspiration."

Brian, slouched in a chair nearby with a nauseous look about him, nodded. "Yeah, dude. Amazing. Great guitar bit." He moaned and shifted his position, bringing one foot up onto the chair with him and resting his chin on his knee.

"He's sick," Zach explained unnecessarily. "He's really, really sick, in fact. I tried to tell him that the show isn't that important, but you know him."

Dave shrugged. "We're not the only act. We only have to be on for forty-five minutes," he said. "And the other bands could compensate." Brian groaned and his skin turned a peculiar bluish color.

"That's not healthy," Zach said, worried.

"You're right," Dave agreed.

"Would you two just shut up. I'll be fine," Brian snapped. "God, I feel like I have menstrual cramps."

"Are you constipated?" Zach asked. "You could be constipated. We could get Liam to get you some Phillips. He'll do anything to keep us going up on stage."

"Including give you his colon if he has to," Dave added. "He loves the band that much."

"He loves it more than we do," Zach agreed. "We're bad band members. Very, very bad."

"We should be punished. They should make us play for hours and hours on end, no breaks."

"And no water, or cigarettes, or. . . Jack Daniels!" 

"Or Heineken, because everyone knows that Heineken should be its own food group," Dave added. "That would be quite a punishment, wouldn't it?"

"It might not be harsh enough, though."

"Would you two please shut up?" Brian snapped, cutting their conversation short.

Dave smiled. "Just look over the lyrics, add to them, whatnot. I have to go find Manny and talk to him about. . .something." After he left, Zach looked back down at the lyrics. 

"You know, these are brilliant," he said.

"Yeah, dude. They are. I need to lay down."

*S11

Rory was standing with one of the roadies, Manny to be exact, by a water cooler. Manny was explaining the fine art of tuning guitars to her, but frankly none of it made much sense. It seemed to be a lot of guesswork in her opinion. Technical guesswork, the worst sort of guesswork. Manny was still funny, though, and it wasn't unpleasant to listen to him chatter on about it.

She felt silly, awkward even, about her situation. She had woken up that morning in the most comfortable bed she'd ever had the good fortune to have slept in. It was soft and warm and there was another warm body next to her. She felt safe and comfortable and then it occurred to her that she was in New York and there was no possible way that there could be a body next to her in New York because Jared never left Cape May. She freaked out and scrambled out of the bed as best she could. She found a discarded Purist shirt on the floor and pulled it over herself. She went into the bathroom, used whatever toothbrush and comb she could find, then grabbed a pair of gray fleece pants that had been laid carefully over a chair right outside the bathroom door. She had slid her feet into her mules, grabbed her purple dress, and that's when it occurred to her that it was Dave lying there in the bed. It was Dave Rygalski of all the men in the world that she found herself sleeping next to in the most comfortable bed in the world. She had started to cry and had left the room in a flurry, not bothering to wake him up because she didn't think she could bear what he might say. She couldn't remember what she had done, she couldn't remember anything after ordering a Long Island Iced Tea at the Shrapnel Fairy, and she couldn't remember what actions she had so brazenly taken to have ended up in bed, naked, with a naked man named Dave Rygalski. It wasn't so much about Lane or any feelings Lane might have. It was about poor, sweet Jared Henderson, who was probably at that very moment she woke up in bed with Dave sleeping in their bed down in her house in Cape May, New Jersey, blissfully unaware that his girlfriend of a year and two months had just cuckolded him. 

But of course, she couldn't tell anyone about it. Lane didn't know about Jared and she fully intended to keep it that way. Maybe if she was truly lucky, Dave would be in the same position she was and wouldn't remember having sex or that they did anything at all last night. That way, she could go blissfully about her business, writing books and supposedly loving a wonderful man named Jared Henderson, who adored her. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry and rant and scare a small child. She wanted to talk to her mother, but that wasn't possible because her mother and the twins were on vacation and her mother needed the time for herself. For the moment, she settled on talking to Manny about something as asinine as guitar tuning. 

When she saw Dave approaching them, not seeming to notice her at first, her stomach bottomed out. "Traitor," she muttered to herself.

"Manny!" Dave called out, jogging over.

Manny looked up. "Hey, Dave, mah man. How you doin' this fine afternoon? Write that song yet?" This was Manny's customary greeting. It was automatic.

Dave beamed. "Yes."

"Ah, man. Maybe next-- You did? Dude, that's fuckin' great. Liam might be able to unwind his nutsack now. He's been rampagin' around here all day." Manny did a funny little dance. "Ain't it great, Ror?" he asked.

Dave glanced at Rory, then realized she was standing there. The look he gave her dashed her hopes of his being too inebriated to remember. She sighed and gave him a small wave, attempting to pass it off as a nothing sort of event. Dave regarded her nonresponse with confusion, but he had other things to worry about. Like telling Manny about the song.

"So, tell me about the song," Manny requested eagerly, as expected.

"Zach and Brian have my lyric sketches, but I can pluck out a little of the guitar for you later on," Dave said, grinning. Regardless of Rory's presence, he was still giddy. He had actually gotten a song written that was decent. 

"What's it about?" Rory asked, her voice soft, unobtrusive. Dave and Manny almost missed that she said anything at all. They both turned to her, because that question would have never occurred to Manny to ask, since he didn't care about the lyrics. He was so guitar crazy. She blushed at their sudden attention. "I mean, what are you trying to get across with the lyrics? Is it a sad, slow song? Is it a whiny post-pop angst rock song? A sappy power ballad? What?"

Dave frowned at her for a moment. Manny raised his bushy black eyebrows at her. "Yeah, man, what's it about?"

Dave shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other. "It's sad, I guess. A sad love song. The girl kills herself at the end."

"Many a love story ends that way. _Anna Karenina_, _Romeo and Juliet_. It's perfect," Rory told him. He wrinkled his brow.

"That's a little creepy," Manny pointed out. "Why does the girl kill herself?"

"Because she didn't know that the boy loved her. He cheated on her and was stupid, and when she kills herself, he feels terrible and has to go through the rest of his life alone," Dave explained. He earnestly didn't feel like explaining his song. He didn't want to cheapen it.

"How. . . chipper," Rory said. She glanced at Dave's watch. "Oh, damn. It's four o'clock. I have to call Jar-- I have to go." She shook her head and walked away, her shoulders tense.

Manny turned to Dave and narrowed his eyes. "Gee, I wonder if you fucked her last night," he said snidely, making a move to walk away.

Dave's hand shot out and clamped around Manny's upper arm. "That's not funny. And it wasn't like that."

"Man, she's, like Lane's best friend. You don't fuck with the best friends of your ex girlfriends. It's, like, against dating etiquette." Manny rolled his eyes. Dave let go of his arm. He briefly wondered why the universe was so against him. Now Manny was giving him advice on etiquette. Maybe tomorrow a schizophrenic bum on the street would attempt to explain advanced calculus to him. 

"I have to go," Dave said awkwardly, walking off in the opposite direction from the way Rory had gone.

"Sure thing, man," Manny muttered. He looked down at the guitar he was holding. He tapped his fingertips on the neck idly. He shifted his weight. Finally, he walked away from the water cooler, too.

----chapter finis

A bit more character development here. I also wrote the song, poem-form, but it's terrible and I won't be posting it. 

I paid for Support Services, so there should be an option on the review thing that says, "Add Author to Alerts" or something like that. Do it. I promise, everything will be easier if you do. So long as you don't mind occasional updates about my Potterfic as well.

Chapter dedicated to Andy and Aaron as they're mowing the grass outside right now. My dog wants to kill Aaron.

--T. Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 11 August 2003**


	6. Chapter Six

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Six

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- Lukewarm chapter. Dedicated to my hooker-pink nail polish. It's very hard to type with wet nail polish.

*

A few hours later, Rory was sitting on a stool beside the bathroom door, reading a book and ignoring her surroundings. Every so often a roadie or a security guard would come by and ask to see her pass, which she would flash at them without looking up from the pages of her book. Manny came past once, to actually use the bathroom, but he didn't say much to her. He was reading from a rather crumpled-looking piece of notebook paper, nodding his head and smiling occasionally. His lips were silently forming each word he read. Rory felt immediately that he was looking at Dave's song. Brian had been in the bathroom twice for more than fifteen minutes each time. Seemed like the poor guy had gotten food poisoning, because he would retch terribly for a few minutes, then rest, and then retch again. It was monotonous and disgusting, and as much as Rory found him annoying, she didn't wish such a misery on anyone. It was a good thing this show was small, a short set surrounded by a bunch of other bands. 

"Rory?" Dave's voice was small, he was nervous and sheepish. She glanced up at him over the top of her book.

"What, Dave?"

He frowned at her, and she felt guilty for being rude. "I'm sorry to bother you," he said, "but I really do think we should talk about what happened last night--"

"I don't," she said. He stared at her, taken aback. This was vertigo-inducing role-reversal going on. The girl didn't want to discuss feelings while the guy did? Something didn't seem right there. But Dave had always been more sensitive, and Rory had always been largely uninterested in what other people thought of her. She supposed she inherited that trait from her mother, the queen of apathy towards the opinions of the petty.

"Why not?" he asked after a moment.

She glared at him and closed her book. "I don't like to discuss how I feel," she said. "Plus right now I don't feel much of anything. I'm very drugged up for this massive hangover I've got and I can't remember anything much since I was sixteen, let alone something that clearly shouldn't have happened." She couldn't believe what she was saying. Even if she couldn't fully remember it, she felt he could. From the way his face fell, she felt it had meant something to him. But it wasn't fair to her, because there was no way the two of them could be together. She had Jared, and he had his baggage, and Rory didn't want to be adored. She had long ago given up on that, because it was a lesser emotion to respect and contempt. Not that she especially wished him to be contemptuous towards her, but she didn't want him to fall in love with her. She didn't want anyone to fall in love with her.

Dave didn't move for a few moments, he stared past her shoes. Then he rose his eyes to hers. He shook his head. "No," he said. He stepped closer and snatched the book out of her hands. She tried to take it back, but he held it up out of her reach.

"That's just mean, Dave," she whined.

He shrugged. "Not really." He grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the bathroom with him, tossed the book out, and shut the door behind him. "This is mean. Now you have to talk, and you don't want to. You know that I want something more out of you than most other guys and that scares you. Am I getting warm, here?"

She sat down on the toilet and pretended to ignore him. But the truth was, she was more aware of him than she wanted to be. Secretly, she wanted him as well.

"I have all night, Rory. We're the last band going on, and our stage time is ten o'clock." He made a show of checking his Fossil. "It's seven-thirty."

"Purist is on stage now," she sniffed.

"Is that really all you can think of to say?" he asked, exasperated.

She snapped her eyes up to meet his. "What do you want me to say, exactly? I don't have any emotional connection to what happened, Dave, as much as that hurts you. It didn't mean anything to me. I'm very sorry, but it was just sex. Not only that, but it happened while we were both drunk and not in our proper states of mind. You're still reeling from whatever latest trauma Lane has put you through, I'm wondering about the man who lives in my house in Cape May."

He was startled. "You have a boyfriend?" he asked incredulously. "On top of everything else, you have a boyfriend?"

She signed and looked down. "I don't love him," she said truthfully. "He's more of a security blanket. But he loves me, Dave. He loves me more than I do, and he believes in me. I don't think that I should break his heart just because I don't feel the same."

Dave rolled his eyes. "Rory, that exactly why you should leave. He thinks that you love him, he wakes up in the morning and wonders what you're doing at that moment. This morning, he did it like he always does, not for a nanosecond considering that you would be waking up beside someone who's not him."

"It's not that easy," she said uselessly. "It's just not that easy."

Dave nodded then, as though he understood. And, maybe he did. Maybe he understood it better than Rory herself at that moment. But it didn't matter anymore. What he felt was that Rory was the muse on whom he wrote that song, the muse on whom he would write several more like it in brilliance. He didn't want to let her go, but it wasn't fair to anyone to force her to stay. "Alright," he said.

She gazed up at him with damp eyes. "What?"

"I don't really know, Ror. We might have had something worthwhile. I'll see you next time we're in New York."

He shut left the door open behind him when he left. She stared out the door at her book, lying there helplessly a few feet away. _Four Blondes_, Candace Bushnell. She was still on the second Blonde. That was when she decided to let herself cry.

*

Lane had never felt so stupid on stage. She was accustomed to feeling so in the zone and so adored. But tonight she felt awkward and strange and silly. Her drumming was perfect, of course, but her soul wasn't in it. In fact, her soul felt bent. What Rory had said had left its mark. Where exactly did she get off believing she had some sort of hold over Dave? 

He had come into her dressing room an hour before they went on stage, presented her with a piece of crumpled paper, and walked back out without a word. She had read if over too many times to count when Liam came into the room and bodily removed her to the stage. She couldn't fathom it, she simply couldn't. After one night with Rory, Dave had managed to accomplish something that had previously been beyond him by light years. 

Lane didn't think she was being selfish in not understanding why Rory could have conjured such brilliance when Lane had not. After all, he had braved her mother to be with her. There was no crazy, deeply traditional Korean woman to defend himself against with Rory. There were just Rory's own mental blocks against intimacy. Lane had always teased her about her inability to commit, and how she just drifted from man to man with no emotional attachment to any of them. Lane doubted many of them were reduced to sniveling twits who wrote brilliant-- albeit semi-disturbing-- songs for her after one night. 

She had actually started to cry the first time she read the song over. It was heartbreakingly sad, telling a very sad tale. It was told from an outsider's point of view, the observer of a doomed relationship. The observer doesn't understand what he or she is talking about, merely describes the emotions and actions of the two parties involved, and their ultimate undoing at each others' hands. When the girl's suicide comes up, the description of the scene disconcerted her. How would Dave know, let alone understand, the emotions involved? (She neglected to remember that his own older brother, Tyler, had killed himself when Dave was ten years old and Tyler was seventeen).

Lane looked out over the crowd of adoring fans and for the first time since their first gig twelve years earlier, she couldn't feel an ounce of their support. She felt as though the plexiglass panels were doing more than simply purifying her drums' sound. They were boundless separation planes, sequestering her away from everyone else. And she felt stupid. She felt insignificant, and like she didn't belong. She had never felt that way before.

She just couldn't get past what Rory had said, and moreover, how she had said it. Why was she clinging so tightly to Dave? She didn't want him for herself, of course, she had José. However, she didn't want anyone else to have him either. She had long ago escalated him, put him on a pedestal far above anyone else. He didn't belong down on the level of the lesser being of Earth. He was special, he was unique. He was her Dave, damn it! He and Rory were not supposed to have anything to do with each other. He was her ex, Rory was her best friend, they were supposed to stay that way forever and ever. They weren't supposed to be together.

They weren't.

------chapter finis

A bit more insight into Lane, a lot more insight into Rory. Just wait till you meet Jared!

--T. Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 23 August 2003**


	7. Chapter Seven

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Seven

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- Thank you for your wonderful reviews. I appreciate each and every one of the fucking things. ::grins:: This chapter is dedicated not to Paul, but his anger. It's so amusing.

*

__

A few weeks later

Brian looked over at Dave, who was sitting with a stormy, 'don't-fucking-touch-me' look in his eyes as he hunched over his guitar and plucked out a few chords. He had headphones on his head, and from what Brian could discern, he was working on yet another song. This one was angry and fast-paced and emotional. Hell, all of them had been like that. This one was the most extreme. Brian seriously wondered what catalyst could have possibly sent Dave into this mood.

As long as he had known him, Brian had never known Dave to be angry. Dave was a nervous, even-tempered man of a rather annoying sweet disposition. He was always concerned with the comfort of others, and would spare no expense to make a loved one okay, even if it meant he would be cold and damp and hungry. Brian had known him since they were seven. Brian had known him when Tyler hung himself in his closet. Brian had known him when he met Lane, and when he and Lane slept together for the first time, and when Lane had a pregnancy scare in their junior year of college. He was Dave's friend when they broke up, and when she married José Lopez and when Dave had stopped writing. He had watched Dave when he was ecstatically happy and when he was so depressed it emanated off his body in clouds. He felt Dave better than he felt himself. This was the one time Brian did not understand him. This was the first time. It hurt Brian deeply.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, Greenwich Mean Time. They were all jetlagged, weary, and in no spirits to play for thousands of overeager Brits. Lane, and José as a consequence, had disappeared as soon as they checked into the hotel. Usually the band stayed together for a few hours when they arrived in a new city, to work out final details. This trip was unusual. They were in London, where they'd never been before, but none of them stayed together. Zach had gone off to find a music shop his aunt had told him about on Charring Cross Road. Liam, ever paranoid, had gone off to talk to the promoters at Royal Albert Hall. Dave had taken his oldest, most trusted guitar and gone to Brian's room, put a pair of crackly old headphones on, and begun playing around. This all left Brian standing in his own doorway, watching Dave and trying not to be bewildered by such a break in tradition. 

Brian had come in and sat down near Dave long ago. He watched every expert movement Dave made with rapt attention. Dave did not have a guitarist's fingers, his were actually rather small and thick. He had to train them to move over the strings, it wasn't natural the way it was for Brian. However, Dave had more desire than Brian, more drive to be perfect. And unlike Brian, Dave usually was perfect. It didn't matter that physically he wasn't made for the damn guitar. 

Whatever was inspiring Dave was inspiring him to write some amazing stuff. That first song, the suicide song, aptly titled "Someplace Cold," had been accepted with a fair amount of awe from Liam. Liam was, perhaps, their harshest critic after themselves, and he was almost impossible to impress. The song left him speechless.

Brian got up from his chair and left Dave to his own devices, playing around on that old guitar. He closed the door behind him and went downstairs to get a drink at the bar because he couldn't think of anything else to do. He felt listless.

The bar was empty save for a bartender with a toothbrush moustache and a little blonde wisp of a cocktail waitress. They were talking, and didn't notice Brian, which was fine with him. He didn't fancy-- he felt special to think in the way of the people he was surrounded by-- a drink so early in the afternoon, especially since he had a show that night.

Up in his hotel room, however, Dave did notice Brian's presence and eventual departure. As soon as the door closed behind him, Dave put down the guitar and laid back on the bed. He laced his fingers together and placed his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He wondered if it was just him, or if the ceilings were nicer here in London than back home. Perhaps it just seemed that way.

He was actually looking forward to the show that night. He wanted to play "Someplace Cold," and he wanted to see what the British (or, as he liked to think, more sophisticated, non-American) crowd thought of it before they played it back home. They had played in Liverpool once, and they actually had covered the Beatles' "Blackbird," on an earlier album. Their version was most referred to in all the major Beatles covers, and often heralded as the best cover version of any Beatles song. Dave personally hated the song and the way people reacted to it, but he had the perfect voice for it-- a wide range and the ability to toss up high and not crack. Liam liked it because it made lots of money.

He had resigned himself to the fact he was an incomprehensible idiot. What had he been thinking when it came to Rory? What did he really expect? He shook his head. Liam, in all his frizzy blonde-headed glory came rushing past. He called out to his old friend and manager. "Lee, I wanted to run an idea by you about tonight," he said.

Liam stopped and looked at Dave concernedly. "What's wrong?" he asked. He was British, and he had worked himself into a proper tizzy since they'd been on his home soil. It was rather amusing.

"It's nothing bad. I was just wondering if you think we're ready to play 'Someplace Cold' on stage yet. I think this might be the crowd to try it out on."

Liam cocked his head to one side as he always did when he was considering something. "Yes," he said in his Peter Grant-ish manner. "Yes, I do think you're ready. It's a brill song, no doubt. You tell the rest, though, chap. I'm off to see about. . " he wandered off, still talking to himself about this or that. Dave rolled his eyes, but even his annoyance with Liam couldn't overshadow his glee about doing the song. He really loved the song that much.

He spent the rest of the afternoon rounding up the other members. When he told them Liam had given them a thumbs-up on playing the song, they all met him with enthusiasm. Brian, having just recovered from a very serious intestinal parasite problem, was excited because it had a solo in it for him. Lane was very proud of the song herself. It marked a change in Dave, a change she was grateful for.

It meant he was done pining for her.

*

Jared Henderson almost always washed his clothes on Sundays at the Sud and Dud on Sunset, two blocks from the Texaco on a patch of land that had once been a sand dune. Instead of watching his shirts and pants and socks turn over and over, he would walk down the street to the Wendy's that had been built not long after he moved into Rory's house. It bothered him a little that she had never bothered to buy a washer and dryer, but the weekly laundry trip afforded him an extra chance to get out and see the town. He loved the town and its little nooks and crannies. He loved the locals, the people who lived there even when the Atlantic turned steel gray and the air bit back. He didn't like sharing the road with them; they were notoriously awful drivers (then again, so was Rory).

He was sorting dirty laundry into two baskets, one for light and one for dark, when he heard a familiar and quite unexpected sound. It was Rory's key turning in the lock on the front door. He tossed an errant sock into the white basket and rose to meet her when she entered.

She had a small suitcase in one hand and her laptop under the other arm. Her hair was in a ponytail and her eyes were red. "Jared?" she called into the house, not immediately seeing him standing by the couch. Behind her, he could see her rental car gleaming in the sun. It was parked next to the pink hydrangea he had planted the past spring.

"Hey, Ror," he said, rounding the couch to take her suitcase and kiss her on the cheek. He pulled back, rather stung, when she stiffened at his touch. "What's the matter?" he asked sincerely. He set the suitcase down beside his feet and touched one of her upper arms. She flinched, but didn't pull away. "Ror?"

She closed her eyes and moved forward into the house, letting him close the front door behind her. Her heart broke when she saw the neatly sorted laundry on the coffee table. Jared was so anal about those kinds of things. He was so amazing, Jared was. Always concerned, always loving, always somewhat motherly, but not so much that she found herself tempted to call him Will. She sat down on the couch and stared past the plastic weave of the blue basket holding the colored clothes. The logo from one of his shirts was showing. She had to look away. It was a Purist shirt. 

He sat down next to her and put an arm around her tense shoulders. She didn't lean in toward him or pull away. She remained completely still, unaffected at all. It hurt him more than if she had jerked away because he didn't understand at all. "Rory, what's wrong?"

She started to cry, still saying nothing. Finally, she did gravitate toward him, resting her head against his collarbone. He drew her close and mumbled things he supposed were comforting. They didn't comfort her at all. "Jared, I'm sorry," she said.

"It's okay," he said absently, inhaling the apple shampoo she'd used. Apple shampoo? Apologies? What was going on? "Why are you sorry?" he asked, overly concerned.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"Rory, what's wrong?"

She sniffled. "I did a bad thing," she told him.

He pulled away from her. She slumped back against the arm of the couch and looked at the floor. "W-what did you do?" Jared asked, his voice wavering because he had a pretty good idea of what she could have done to break herself into a million little pieces like this. 

She shook her head and closed her eyes. His aftershave was the same one Dave had used, he smelled exactly like Dave. Strange how she hadn't recognized the smell when she'd been with Dave. She didn't want to think about Dave. "Can you forgive me?" she asked.

Jared bit his lip. He wasn't so sure he knew what he would be forgiving, if he could. "Depends," he said noncommittally.

She sniffed and turned her head to meet his hazel gaze. His eyes had gone a stormy gray-brown, giving her all the answer she needed. "I haven't lost my feelings for you," she prefaced, "but I've fallen in love with someone else."

Whatever Jared had been expecting her to say, this evidently wasn't it. "Is that it?" he asked. He had known she had not been in love with him. Something had happened to her when she was in college to make her avoid all true intimacy. She was fine with casual sex; it was escapism and Rory was all for escapism. She was fine with an empty relationship with a wonderful man who adored her if he could make her feel safe for an hour a week. Jared loved her intensely, but he had never harbored any delusions where her heart was concerned. 

"I slept with him," she admitted in a rough voice.

Jared relocated to the armchair on the other side of the room, his face and thoughts troubled. "Was it just sex?" he asked, afraid of her answer. He couldn't meet her eyes.

She took a long time to answer his question, because she hadn't actually thought about it for herself. The whole way down from New York, she had blared her music and thought about her resentment towards Lane's selfishness, never once daring to think about Dave or Jared or her feelings therein. Now that Jared was forcing her to think, her head was starting to hurt. "I don't know," she said finally.

"What does that mean?" he asked, his voice soft.

"It was good sex," she said, looking up at his face, though not his eyes, to gauge a reaction. She was dismayed that he didn't give an immediate one. She didn't offer any other details. She didn't want to cheapen her own memories for Jared's state of mind.

The two of them sat there for a long while, silently mulling over the things she'd said, the impenetrable rift she'd dug in one night with Dave. "Who was he?" Jared asked, his voice neutral and small. It was not a voice befitting a six-foot-four man.

"You wouldn't know him," she said. "Just some guy."

Jared almost laughed. In different circumstances, he certainly would have. But now he was too sad. "Rory, we both know that it's impossible for you to fall for 'just some guy.'"

And, like Jared, Rory almost laughed. "Dave Rygalski," she said, mispronouncing the his last name on purpose, trying to give him a shred of anonymity. It was futile; Jared was too insightful.

"The guitarist?" Jared asked in a surprisingly mild tone.

"The guitarist," Rory confirmed. 

Jared got up from his chair and left the room. Rory stood up and went out to her car and drove away from the house, headed for the tourism district. She had grabbed Jared's beach tag pass from the table beside the door as she left, so she flashed it at the bored woman monitoring beach traffic (or rather, reading "The Firm" and absently checking beach tags). It wasn't terribly hot outside, for which Rory was grateful (she was wearing rather heavy jeans and a tee shirt). It wasn't windy or cloudy or particularly sunny. It was simply a day to go to the beach, eat a pretzel, and sleep. 

She spread out a towel she'd had in the trunk (just in case) and laid down on her stomach so she wouldn't have to look at the sky. A Japanese woman with two (half-American) young sons was situated nearby, and every so often, the serene sounds of the ocean and the gulls were punctuated by the woman squawking at the boys. Eventually, she fell asleep.

Hours later, when she returned to the house, she found a lot of Jared's things gone, and the rest packed up with a note on them saying he'd be back for them the following morning. It made her want to cry, because part of her life was over. It made her feel relieved because she wasn't hurting him anymore, although she still felt awful about cheating on him in the first place.

She sat on the sofa for a moment more before standing and searching for the telephone. She found it, amazingly enough, in its cradle. Jared was so funny about those kinds of things. It was an alien concept to her. 

She dialed a familiar number and tapped her foot and whistled 'Music Box Dancer' while she listened to the ringer.

Finally, "Dragonfly Inn, Lorelai speaking. How may I help you?"

Rory thanked every godly deity ("Thank you Anubis, thank you Artemis, thank you Brad Pitt. . .") she could think of for the sound of her mother's voice. "Mom?" she said

"Hey babe," Lorelai said in standard greeting form. "What can I do ya for?"

"I need advice," Rory told her, cutting right to the chase. "Serious advice."

---chapter finis

I love Jared. I've got my own little stuffed version of him, being that he's been imported from a previous original story that got scrapped a looonnng time ago. I just hugged him when I wrote this. It's so sad.

_There is **only one **chapter left, then the epilogue-type thingy, which I personally think is the best chapter of the whole story._

--T. Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 3 September 2003**


	8. Chapter Eight

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Eight

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- This chapter basically has gotten a terminal case of the cutes. ::shakes head::

*

Rory had won the Pulitzer Prize. She didn't like to think about it a whole lot, but the fact was that she was an award-winning journalist before she was a novelist. She did have obligations to a magazine (_American Woman_) and to a newspaper she occasionally wrote for (_The New York Times_). They wanted her talent. But they understood that she didn't write because she had to. She had plenty of money; she had no need for a real job.

She won the award for her disturbing piece on prisons, and how they do more harm than good for drug addicts. She didn't sketch the typical portrait of a prisoner with her words and she ignored the violent criminals. She focused her article solely on the men who needed help but didn't get any. Her article, published first in the _Times_, then in _USA Today_, then finally in _Time Magazine_, caught a lot of attention and eventually earned her a bevy of awards. They hung on the wall of her office in her Cape May house, their glass gleaming in the seashore sunshine. And, the only thing she really wanted to come of her work happened, someone made changes. Huge reforms were made in the prison system to rehabilitate persons convicted of certain crimes rather than merely punish them. 

The opening sentence of the article had been, "An auto mechanic in a small town once said, 'You got to fix the problem right the first time, r'else you'll just be cuttin' holes in your pockets to just patch the problem over and over.' This is very wise advice." It struck a chord in an American public formerly content to ignore the problem growing in their dark streets. Many of the men she mentioned were not hardened drug dealers or evil men. They were middle class, and a few were upper class even, most were young. They all shook horribly when she spoke with them, they all told her terrible stories about withdrawal and loss and need and most importantly, addiction. Most of them were just average people who had fallen on hard times, who had succumbed to peer pressure, and who had simply lost the will to succeed. 

She wasn't stupid. She knew that most of the reason her books had ever been even noticed amid the sea of thousands of other books published each year was her Pulitzer for "The Men Apart." But that's not to say she wasn't grateful. Her mother always told her to be the best, but also not to look a gift horse in the mouth. _Blackbird _had been a lovely, whimsical story to write. She wrote it to cheer Lane up after her breakup with Dave. _A Melted Crayon_ had been moody and intense and very sad in places. She wrote it to prove to herself that she could do it.

She was on an airplane, staring at the small screen of her laptop, willing the words to flow through her fingers like they always did. She had found her story for Cape May. She was delighted, and for this reason she was on a plane. But for the first time in her life, she couldn't form a single word when she set out to. It made her angry and she didn't want to be angry.

She tapped her fingers on the keys, but didn't type a single letter. The man next to her had his headset turned up too loud, and she could clearly hear every note of "Rhapsody in Blue",or whatever the song he was playing was called. She sighed and stared past her blank computer screen and contemplated how she would begin the first love story she would ever write.

_They met in Cape May_. . . seemed to be a suitable beginning, she decided. _They met in the summertime, when the tourists are out and the seagulls are angry and plump. It was five o'clock in the afternoon on what wasn't a terribly hot day, so the air conditioned eateries were largely vacant in favor of the Washington Street Mall and the lovely beach. _

Margaret Dowry, a twenty-something woman of medium height and medium build, was having a boring day. She had come to Cape May for excitement, which she got plenty of on the steamy days. But she didn't care much anymore. 

Margaret was waiting on her only table, a crotchety old Vietnamese woman with beady black eyes and a gravelly voice. Mrs. Li was a recurring nightmare in the small resort town. Margaret, being the newest bit of meat on the floor, was forced to wait on her. It wasn't that Mrs. Li was rude, because she wasn't overtly, just she didn't tip very well, and she was weird. She was always talking about fate and fortune and luck. Margaret truthfully didn't mind, and Mrs. Li gave her something to keep her mind occupied, telling stories about her homeland and the war and the good fortune she'd had to meet an American boy.

Margaret's own luck would soon change. 

*

Dave rubbed his head with the towel Manny had handed him the moment he stepped off of the stage. His hair was matted to his head with sweat from the intense spotlights. He felt heavy and dense and exhilarated. The crowd had been terrific. They responded properly to everything, and the response to "Someplace Cold" had been phenomenal. He hadn't expected it to be accepted with arms so wide open.

He watched Lane hug José's fairly well-adjusted son Jax, despite her being sweaty and most likely smelly from the show. He wondered fleetingly if she didn't love the boy more than the man. Maybe that was their whole attraction. Maybe if Dave had gone out and gotten a kid things would have been different. Maybe, but probably not.

Manny was giving towels to Brian and Zach when he caught Dave's eye and grinned. Dave thought that was kind of weird. It was an "I know something you don't know" kind of grin. Dave personally thought that there was nothing on earth that Manny should know more about than him. Manny could tune any guitar perfectly in five minutes, but there was no way he would could tell you the answer to five times five.

Manny and his grin were quickly forgotten, though, by the time Dave got back to his dressing room. He was coming to love bigger venues like Royal Albert Hall. Each band member got his or her own dressing room, which meant he didn't have to share with Brian. Brian was a slob. A bunch of fans wanting autographs lined the hallway toward the dressing rooms. He looked back at Zach, who was right behind him, and sighed. Zach smiled and shrugged in typical Zach fashion.

He signed a few CD liner notes, a woman's tee shirt, and a glossy eight-by-ten of the band without paying much attention and retreated to the safety of his dressing room. He shut the door behind him and then leaned against it, his forehead pressed against the white-painted wood. He hadn't noticed until his hand his the doorknob, but he was completely exhausted.

"You look about as good as I feel," a voice from behind him said, rupturing the almost-silence of the room. 

He picked his head up off of the door, the loss of contact between wood and skin making a small sucking noise, and froze. He stared at the white paint and blinked a few times. "Lovely," he muttered. "A crazed fan and an overly long concert in the same night."

"Oh, shut up and turn around," she told him.

He immediately connected voice to person and turned around. Now he understood why Manny had grinned at him. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I came to see you," she replied, wringing her hands. "Obviously."

"Why? Is something wrong? Are you pregnant?" Dave's mind was starting to skip like a scratched CD. He felt dizzy.

"Maybe." His eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. He felt dizzier. She grinned. "Actually, probably not. Although I have learned that anything is possible. After all, you wrote a song and I've swallowed my pride."

He swallowed hard and met her startlingly blue eyes. "What are you doing here?" he repeated.

She got up off the couch and stood in front of him. "I came across the Atlantic Ocean to see you, Dave," she told him. "And, I might add, completely against my better judgment. But I broke up with Jared and I was sitting there in my house thinking and I called my mother and she did that quiz thing Joey did on Friends once asked me a bunch of random questions and then one of them was what I felt towards you and I said that I was in love with you, completely against my better judgment because I know that you're still in love with Lane and she's with José and you probably hate me immensely right now because of what I did to you . . ." She stopped and took a deep breath. She noticed his neutral expression and looked down at her hands, obviously feeling rejected and humiliated. "And I can see now that I've made a complete ass of myself, so if you'll excuse me, I'll be getting on the next train back to La Guardia and I promise to never bother you again, even if I am pregnant."

She had the door open and one foot outside before he moved. He hadn't been able to process her run-on sentence. By the time he had blinked back to life, she was gone, the door closed behind her. He sprang into action and threw the door open. He looked up and down the narrow corridor, craning his neck to see around this roadie or that fan, but he didn't see her anywhere. He cursed himself. He cursed Lane. He cursed Manny and God and José and Rory's pride and her ability to make him feel completely unworthy, like the lowest scrap of rubbish on the face of the earth. He turned back into the room and shook his head. "You're a fucking idiot," he told himself.

"I agree," her voice again. He wondered if it was in his head after all. "I'm sorry." He looked back and she was standing there again, wisps of hair coming out of its formerly tidy ponytail from her sprint up and down the corridor. He knew what an obstacle course that could be. Her cheeks were pink and she was smiling sheepishly. "I couldn't just leave it like that," she said.

"Really?" he asked. This girl was ballsier than he was. Then again, Lane frequently told him he had no balls at all, and he wasn't sure if he found that insulting or not. Lane meant that he was too nice, and perhaps he was. 

"Really," she confirmed.

He grinned. "That's fabulous." He crossed the corridor and picked her up by her waist. She giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. He pinned her against the far wall and kissed her thoroughly.

A few hours later, when they were lying in the bed in his hotel room together, he asked her the obvious, if a little vague, question. "So are you?"

"I think I already told you that it was a very slim chance. And it's been almost six weeks. I'd be well into my morning sickness by now I was pregnant."

He made a face at her. "Well, pardon me, Miss Know-It-All. I've never been pregnant before." 

She laughed. "Do you really want to have a baby?"

He rolled away, onto his back, and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know. With Lane, we never considered it."

"Yeah, but you're thirty years old now. You were still a kid when you were with her," Rory pointed out.

"Don't you think we should get married before we consider children?" he asked.

"Then we get married as soon as possible," she advised. "Because you never know. When Mom was pregnant with the twins, she didn't get sick until her second month. Of course, Mother Nature bit her in the ass with twice the misery, but still."

"Do you want to have a baby?"

"Not especially," she said, making a face. "I don't want to go through the whole birth thing. It seems scary and horrible. I promised myself after the twins were born that I would never have kids."

"That was ten years ago," he pointed out. "A lot can happen in ten years."

"Why are we talking about this now?" she asked. "We have much better things to talk about than babies and families, don't we?" 

He shrugged and looked over at her. "Have you been writing lately?"

She grinned and started to tell him about Margaret and her luck.

*

Lane Kim-Lopez was used to disappointment by that point. But all the various disappointments she'd suffered in recent years, that had to be the absolute, bar-none worst. She was so angry and so hurt she was shaking. She almost tripped herself twice walking down the hallway to Dave's door. She knocked. "David Andrew Rygalski!" she yelled, beating on the door.

Inside, Dave stirred from a particularly restful sleep, in which he had been dreaming about. . . the girl in the bed next to him. He looked over at her and smiled. She was still asleep, but he knew that. She could sleep through anything. As he was sitting up and blinking sleepily, Lane continued to pound on the door.

Finally, it connected in his mind and he jumped out of bed and struggled to locate his pants. He hopped on one awkward foot across the room and opened the door before he had his fly properly done up. He pushed Lane out into the hall and shut the door quietly behind him. "What do you want?" he asked, eyes wild.

She whimpered. "I'm so sorry, Dave!" she said. He looked down at her, his anger rapidly depleting. She looked horrible. Her dark hair was matted and dull and her makeup from the night before hadn't been washed off before she went to bed, so it was in flecks all down her cheeks. She was wearing her glasses, something she never did anymore. Dave had always preferred her wearing glasses. Anyway, as soon as she launched herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, he forgot about Rory on the other side of the door.

"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.

She sniffed. "You were right. Everyone was right."

"I'm always right, but that's not the point."

"José is an ass," she said, then let out another shrieking sob. 

"Yes, yes. Took you long enough to figure out," he said. He was aware that his words weren't exactly soothing, and he didn't care. He didn't know what to make of this situation.

"Last night, Jax and I came back to the hotel after going out to eat and I found José and Jax's mother. . ." She trailed off and cried harder at the image of José and his hateful ex.

Dave drew back away from her, quite unsure what he could possibly say.

Lane choked and looked up at him. "I'm so sorry about everything I've done to you," she said. "Everything."

"I don't know what to say," he told her earnestly.

"Then don't say anything," she said. She closed the space between them and grabbed him by the back of the neck, drawing his mouth to hers. For a moment he kissed her back, but then it occurred to him what exactly he was doing.

What exactly did he want? He had pined for Lane for five years, but she hadn't wanted anything to do with him. Nothing. For a whole year after their breakup, she hadn't even spoken to him unless she had to. She had even married someone else to spite him, someone she had claimed to be in love with, someone who would ultimately hurt her anyway. But, as he realized with a jolt, he was happy for the first time in a long time, and it had nothing to do with Lane. Nothing at all. He had found someone else, someone who wasn't selfish or flighty.

And that's why he pulled away from Lane then, holding her arms' length away from him. She stared up at him in surprise, clearly flabbergasted that Dave had rebuffed her. "What?" she asked.

"You aren't going to do this to me," he told her. "You are not going to fuck with me this time."

"I'm not fucking with you," she snapped back. "I thought long and hard about this. I slept out in this hallway last night and I realized what I'd been denying all these years. I'm still in love with you."

"That isn't fair, Lane."

"It's never fair. What's the matter with you?" Obviously, something was. "What's changed?"

"Everything," he hissed. "Everything has changed. I moved on, Lane. I have someone new. She's in my bed right now, actually. I don't need you anymore. I don't need the trauma you've caused me. It isn't all about you."

She mouthed the name, 'Rory,' and started to cry all over again, realization coming over her. "Unbelievable," she muttered. She looked up at the ceiling. "Why do you hate me? Are you punishing me for not obeying my mother? Huh?"

"Lane, shut up," he told her. "I'm not going to listen anymore."

"She's a bad influence on you," Lane said, grasping wildly for straws. "You used to be so sweet, so perfect. Look at yourself now, Dave Rygalski! You're a heartless--"

He turned his back on her, opening the door and reentering the room. "Thank you," he said, and shut the door behind him. Out in the hallway, Lane sank to the floor and leaned against the wall beside the door. She noticed Brian standing in his doorway across the way, shaking his head.

"What are you looking at?" she snapped at him. He shrugged and went back inside.

Inside, the first thing Dave noticed was that Rory was sitting up in bed, the sheets wrapped around her. She saw him and smiled. She scratched her scalp. "What was the little screaming match in the hallway about?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. "José cheated on her and she decided she wanted me back."

Rory crawled closer and wrapped her arms around his neck from behind. She brushed his ear with her lips. "What did you tell her?" she asked.

"That she couldn't do that to me anymore," he said. "That I had finally moved on."

"You're welcome," Rory said. She kissed his cheek.

He turned around and looked at her. "Oh, so you're going to take credit for this, then?" he asked, feigning being taken aback.

"Of course," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're the idiot here."

"I am not!" he insisted. 

She kissed him lightly on the lips. "It's okay. I can forgive idiocy."

---------chapter finis

Oh, and she's not really pregnant. Thought I should clear that up. Anyone who reviews asking if she is will only be made an ass out of in the last chapter.

Just an epilogue left. Can't believe it. Completely cannot believe it. I finished writing this thing the first week of June and it's only now done being posted. . . Yes, fully aware of how completely pathetic this makes me. Fully. 

The epilogue takes place sixteen months later. It's a tight third person point of view on Lorelai, her perception of the Rory/Dave dynamic down the road from the hotel room in London (where we left off; if you're confused, reread the last two chapters). And you get to meet the twins, finally.

Thank you so much for everything over the course of my posting this story. Everyone will be thanked individually for wordy reviews later.

--T. Henneth / _story completed 12 June 2003_ / **chapter posted 15 September 2003**


	9. Chapter Nine Epilogue

****

She's So Halogen

****

Chapter Nine (Epilogue)

Author-- Tinuviel Henneth

****

Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!

****

Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.

****

Author's Note-- Well... here it is. The last chapter. It's...it's...over! ::whimpers::

*

__

Sixteen months later

Lorelai Victoria Gilmore-Danes was sitting on her daughter's couch in her New York apartment, absently flicking through the channels on the television. Nothing had caught her fancy yet and she was starting to doubt that New York cable had anything to offer her. She had an hours old empty box of Chinese take out open on the coffee table in front of her; her feet were up resting beside the box. The twins, almost twelve years old, had begged Lorelai to come down to the City to visit their beloved older sister. Being the masochist she was (and secretly wanting to see Rory as well), she had agreed. 

Their trip had been a mistake from the beginning. When they arrived at Rory's apartment, Lorelai found more than she bargained on, and in a strategic maneuver to not let the twins know what exactly she had walked in on their sister doing, she had offered to buy them ice creams at the stand down the street to give Rory and Dave a chance to get dressed. She didn't understand it. When she was six months pregnant, no one could have gotten her within ten feet of a naked Luke. Another difference between the Gilmore girls.

When Rory and Dave had come down and joined Lorelai and the twins on the street, Lorelai jokingly said to the pair, "I guess that makes up for all the times I didn't catch you in high school, huh?"

Dave pointed out the obvious. "There wasn't really anything going on in high school."

"In general," Lorelai replied. The twins were giggling between them, so she had a fairly good idea they were completely aware of what their mother had seen. She was tempted to ask them how they thought their sister had gotten pregnant, but didn't. Mostly because that would make her feel stupid. She'd given them the sex talk when they were seven. She couldn't remember why she'd chosen that particular moment. She'd never officially given it to Rory.

At the present moment, Dave had the twins ("heathens," he called them) out and about and Rory was at a book signing in the Village for her new novel, _Long Walks on the Beach_. Lorelai, upon reading the book, had been unsettled by the fact the main character Margaret had a personality exactly like hers. Flattered, of course, but unsettled. It was disconcerting to have yourself immortalized in literature with a new name. A particularly bad name, for that matter. Margaret indeed. Lorelai snorted indignantly at the thought.

Finally admitting the fact the television had nothing to offer her, she tossed the remote onto the coffee table (not realizing until she did it that the surface was glass and she could have broken it). She hopped off the couch and wandered to the kitchen, suddenly ravenous. Rory always had excellent taste in men. They all could cook marvelously, and Dave was no exception. She rifled through their refrigerator trying to find something that wasn't more than three days old. She finally pulled out a Rubbermaid box containing some sort of pasta in a red sauce with chicken breast. She lifted the lid to vent and tossed it in the microwave. 

While she waited for the food to heat up, she poked around the apartment. Actually, it would be more accurate to say she went into Rory's old office, where the nursery was going to be. A few coats of pale yellow paint covered up the pretty toile wallpaper. A blank white strip was left at the top and at the baseboard, and Lorelai figured they were going to have Zach come in and work his paint-y magic on it for personalization. The room was mostly empty, because all of Rory's office stuff had been relocated to the spare bedroom. It didn't really matter if they finished the room before the baby came because they planned on being in Cape May then, but when the parents had to be in New York, they had to have a place for baby, too. 

Lorelai looked up at the spiral staircase and remembered how Rory had argued with Dave about location of baby's room. "We can't put the baby in the loft bedroom, Dave. Hello, what if he or she falls down the staircase?"

"But," Dave had said, "a baby doesn't have a lot of mobility until it's several months old."

"I'm not that shortsighted," Rory had snapped. "But think of what a hassle it would be to have to run down our staircase at two in the morning and run up the other one. At least if the baby's in the office, we only have to run down one staircase."

Rory won the argument. Dave had to agree with her that navigating two spiral staircases in the dark of the wee hours of the morning did not sound a bit appetizing. He had called Brian and Zach to help him move everything out of the office and up to the loft the very next day. He wouldn't let her lift anything heavy, which she found ridiculous. She gave him a dissertation about how women in China used to go into labor, give birth in the rice paddy, and work efficiently the whole time. "Are you a Chinese woman, then?" he had retorted.

Lorelai could still smell the paint in the airless, windowless little room. She wondered why anyone would put a baby in a room without a window. It seemed mean. Maybe they would have Zach paint a trompe l'oeil window, too. That would be cute. They could build a little windowsill and hang curtains and everything. She made a mental note to tell them about her idea. 

Then again, Rory (and Dave by extension) had yet to really be open to her ideas. A phone conversation didn't go by that Lorelai didn't ask when they intended to get married. Rory always either skillfully dodged the question or shrugged and said, "Whenever Dave deigns to ask me." Lorelai didn't especially have a problem with her grandchild being born out of wedlock, but she had a fairly good idea her own parents were shitting elephants over it. Imagine, first their daughter, then granddaughter. Lorelai often defended Rory by saying that she wasn't sixteen; she was almost thirty-one, and would be by the time the baby was born. Rory and Dave would eventually get married; Lorelai and Christopher had been damned from the start.

She wondered what the baby's room in Cape May looked like. She hadn't been down the that house since the past Christmas, when Dave had cooked for everyone (because Rory would have botched it). The house was small but comfortable, though Lorelai wondered how they would fit more than one kid in it if they decided to have any more. Georgia, as Christopher's thirteen-year-old daughter preferred to be called, had come down with her father for the dinner. She and the twins had wreaked havoc on the skeletal off-season town population, running amok in the streets. Even Emily and Richard Gilmore had come down, and they praised Dave up and down about the delicious food. Emily offered him a job as her chef, but Lorelai and Rory both advised him to graciously turn it down ("and run away," as Lorelai added in an undertone).

The microwave beeped, and Lorelai was rocketed out of her reverie. She shuffled out of the purgatorial not-an-office-not-yet-a-nursery. She got a fork out of the drawer and removed her food from the machine. She poked at the steaming red and white puddle and decided it was suitably heated. Grinning to herself and feeling proud that she had been clever enough to heat it up perfectly without blowing anything up, she scurried back to the living room and plopped back on the couch. Between bites, she alternated between glaring at the faux sheepskin rug and the stupid TV. 

She set her dish down on the coffee table beside the empty Chinese food box and picked the remote up again. She flicked through a dozen or so channels and found, to her delight, _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_ to be on. She squealed and put the remote down beside her on the couch. She curled up and pulled one of the throw pillows onto her lap. It was the point where the rich girl had a bunch of people searching through hundreds of candy bars for the golden ticket.

Lorelai drifted to sleep sometime before the end of the movie, and when Rory came home, a different movie was more than half over with. Lorelai was stretched out over the entire length of the couch. Rory tossed her key card onto the table beside the door and shucked off her sandals. Her feet were swollen. It was August and Rory felt fat and uncomfortable, no matter how often Dave said he loved how she looked.

"Mom?" Rory said, sitting on the chair nearby. "Mom?"

Lorelai was gradually roused out of her nap, and when she saw the new movie, she swore like a sailor and pouted. Rory quirked an eyebrow at her. "I fell asleep during _Willy Wonka_," Lorelai said sheepishly.

"Anathema!" Rory squeaked, pretending to be horrified. She saw the dish of pasta Lorelai had abandoned on the table and frowned. "Hey, missy, no one told you that you had free rights to our refrigerator. I'll have you know Dave made that for me for when I got home. It's full of onions and I've been craving onions for a week now."

Lorelai shrugged. "Oh, pardon me. There's still some left."

Rory wrinkled her nose. "How long has it been sitting out?"

"An hour?" Lorelai guessed. "It's not growing legs or teeth, Ror. I think it's probably safe."

"That's so not funny." She got up and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She had drunk a lot of water since finding out about her pregnancy. She found that she actually liked it for the first time in her life. Coffee, unfortunately, was another story.

"So, do you know what the baby's going to be yet?" Lorelai called a minute later.

"Um, a baby?" Rory replied. She set her empty glass on the counter by the sink.

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "I mean, boy or girl."

Rory stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at her mother tiredly. "I want to be surprised." Dave really, really wanted to know, and it amused Rory to no end to watch him squirm in annoyance because she wouldn't let the technician or the doctor tell them the baby's sex. However, when it came to Rory and the baby, Dave was a pushover. And he knew Rory knew it. 

"Couldn't the doctor just. . . tell Dave and not you."

Rory raised an eyebrow at Lorelai. "Have you met Dave? There is no possible way he could keep that information secret. He'd probably tell Zach or Brian and one of them would inadvertently tell me, therefore killing the surprise. And, by extension, killing Dave because I would murder him."

"Or pull a Lorena Bobbit," Lorelai suggested.

"Gross," Rory admonished.

"Yeah, you're right," Lorelai agreed. Then she grinned conspiratorially. "Hey--"

"No, mother," Rory said rather boredly. "I am not going into that with you again." Lorelai asked her all the time how Dave compared with that poster of the naked man that used to hang in Rory's office.

"Oh, whatever," Lorelai muttered. 

"Perv," Rory said under her breath.

"Daughter of perv," Lorelai said in sing-song voice. She even had a little dance to go with it. Rory shook her head and sighed. Lorelai changed the channel.

"You're mean." They watched some asinine sitcom rerun for a few minutes.

"How do you do it?" Lorelai asked, an eyebrow raised.

Almost afraid to ask, Rory said, "Do what?"

"You know. . ._it_. You're all pregnant and stuff. I don't get it." Lorelai shrugged sheepishly. Rory gave her the most horrified look yet. "No, I haven't been mulling over it this whole time. I was just thinking, because I have no experience in the area, how a six month pregnant woman has sex."

Rory rolled her eyes. "Well, it's difficult," she said. The two, once again proving that they were more like sisters than mother and daughter, shared a look and promptly dissolved into giggles.

"What do you mean difficult?" Lorelai asked.

"Hard," Rory replied, blushing.

Lorelai snickered. "I made you say 'hard'!"

"Once again: perv." Rory crossed her arms over her abdomen. She looked cute annoyed, Lorelai decided. She looked happy and glowy. It was the best she'd seen her daughter look in years.

"Oh, well, there's worse things I could be. I could be like Michel, for one thing." Lorelai laughed at Rory's frightened look. "Hey, what are you going to do about baby clothes if you don't know the sex?"

"Everything comes back to sex with you, doesn't it?" Rory said, half exasperated. "Anyway, the baby will just wear lots and lots of yellow. Yellow is androgynous. It is mellow and everyone can wear it."

"I would advise you to never use the word 'androgynous' around me ever again. It's scary and then it makes me think of that annoying Garbage song and then I get even more scared." Lorelai shivered. 

"Yeah," Rory agreed. "I'm not all that fond of yellow, to tell you the truth. It's too. . ."

"Yellowy?" Lorelai offered. 

"Obviously," Rory allowed patiently. "But more than that. It's bright and respectful. It's a very unostentatious color. It's easy to paint over." Lorelai watched her daughter's face carefully as Rory chose her words. There was some subtext to what she was saying and Lorelai didn't understand it completely. "Dave hates the color," Rory continued. "He wants green, but I say green reminds me too much of blue, which is a boy color. On the reverse, he wants purple. Purple is related to pink, which is a girl color. Red and orange are out for being too intense. This, of course, leaves us with yellow."

"You think too much."

"Lane tells me that all the time."

"Have you spoken to her lately?" Lorelai asked, surprised. Rory gave her mother a cool look. 

"I saw her in July with her new boyfriend. He's very cute and sweet and he has no outstanding children by women with whom his relationship remains unresolved. She acts like the old Lane when she's around him."

"The old Lane?" Lorelai implored, not sure what Rory meant.

"Before life happened and we grew up," Rory said. "She's fun again."

Lorelai smiled. "Is she excited about your baby?"

"Are you kidding? She called godmother duty when we found out we were pregnant. She's very devoted to this whole thing." Rory smiled to herself. After Lane and José's divorce was finalized, the band took a month-long break. Lane went to her parents' hometown in Korea and toured the country, absorbing so much of what she had resisted over her formative years and exorcising all her Dave-related demons. She had come back a fresher, much happier woman. 

"That's incredible," Lorelai said. She looked at the screen. "Oooh! A _Friends_ marathon! We are so watching this." Rory didn't bother to argue.

About an hour or so later, Dave and the twins returned from their exhausting trek around the city. Dave had barely pecked Rory on the cheek in greeting when he sat down in the upholstered chair and tapped out. The Gilmore girls looked at each other evilly and then made fawning noises. 

The twins went and did their own things. Lucas, fondly nicknamed Butch by his mother, had gone into the kitchen as soon as they got home and had been digging around in the cupboards for twenty minutes. Catherine, who Lorelai called Praline because of the kind of ice cream she ate an absurd amount of during her pregnancy with the twins, was in the bathroom fixing her long dark hair. It never ceased to amuse Dave that his girlfriend had younger siblings who went by Praline and Butch.

Rory sat back and put a hand on her stomach and closed her eyes. Lorelai watched her oldest daughter drift away with a small smile on her face. She went into the kitchen and found Butch sitting on the floor, eating out of a box of cereal with a manic glint in his eyes. She gave him a weird look but didn't say anything. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Dave's coveted Heineken. It had a post-it note stuck to it that said: "Note to Rory: beer not for baby," in Dave's small, cramped writing. This struck Lorelai as funny, since she knew very well that Dave knew Rory would never touch beer. 

"I'll try to remind her," Lorelai said aloud to no one in particular. Then she left the room.

The End

Well, I'm short of time at the moment, so I'll write a separate chapter of responses and thank yous to everyone when I do have more. 

I hope that you enjoyed the trip here. Did I succeed in getting a "good, old-fashioned romance" as I advertised in my summary?

-T. H. / 21 September 2003


End file.
